Fallen Drops of Fire
by Chasmfiend
Summary: In one world, Zuko and Azula are kidnapped by earthbenders and rescued by a strange group of water tribesmen led by a firebender. In another world, Roy Mustang and his men are called in to deal with a rogue group of alchemists whose experiments have resulted in two children capable of circleless transmutation.
1. Falling

9th Day, Peach Moon, Year of the Tiger  
Prince Zuko

Fire Lord Azulon had been furious, easily the angriest Zuko had ever seen anyone, and that included the disastrous firebending demonstration when he had accidentally lit a hanging depicting Fire Lord Chan Mae on fire. That was one of the very few times that Zuko had seen his father shout.

Dad was the one being shouted at right now, by _his_ father, Fire Lord Azulon. And he was facing some other punishment too, no doubt as horrible as the Fire Lord to think up, for daring to suggest that _he_ should be named Crown Prince, ahead of Uncle Iroh.

Zuko curled up a little tighter in bed, trying not to think about it.

The door creaked open. Zuko looked over and saw his sister, Azula leaning up against the door frame. "Dad's going to kill you," she said in the sing-song voice that she used to needle Zuko. "Really, he is." She turned and flashed a grin at Zuko.

Zuko sat up. "Ha ha, Azula," he said. "Nice try." He wasn't going to fall for it this time. Sure Zuko had fallen, twice, when demonstrating his kata, but that wasn't what had angered the Fire Lord. Mom wouldn't let Dad take his anger out on Zuko, any more than Dad would let Mom pull Azula out of her extra firebending lessons.

Azula flipped a wrist in dismissal. "Fine. Don't believe me." She walked over to Zuko's bed, her arms outstretched like she was balancing on a wire. "But I heard everything." She gripped hold of one of the bedposts and leaned out, letting the post take her weight. "Grandfather said Dad's punishment should fit his crime." She let go of the bedpost, clenching her fists and marching off towards the other end of the bed, her voice low and gruff in obvious imitation of the Fire Lord. "You must learn the pain of losing a first born son-" she twirled around the other bedpost "-by sacrificing your own."

Zuko made a face. "Liar," he said. It _had_ to be a lie. Fire Lord Azulon wouldn't be ordering the death of his only remaining grandson just to punish Dad. Not when that would leave _Azula_ as the sole hope for the continuation of the line of Sozin.

"I'm only telling you for your own good." Azula stared at her fingers, obviously considering something important. "I know," she said brightly, as she plopped down on the edge of Zuko's bed, without being invited. "Maybe you could-"

There was a flicker, like a bolt of lightning, that arced from the far side of the bedpost near where Azula was sitting and vanished somewhere behind Zuko. Then there was a loud cracking sound and the bed lurched, before toppled over like three of its legs had gone missing.


	2. Landed

9th Day, Peach Moon, Year of the Tiger  
Princess Azula

Azula grabbed hold of the bedpost, using to keep herself from tumbling off what remained of the bed. Two-thirds of it had inexplicably vanished, and now the bed was tilted over like a tent with only one wall. Azula swung out over one of the empty spaces and let herself drop to the ground.

The cold from the floor seeped through Azula's boots, making a part of her wish she had stayed on the bed where it was warm. The floor should not have been that cold, had never been that cold before, not even in the middle of winter when the air had a chill to it and Mom made them 'bundle up' when they went outside for firebending practice.

Azula looked around. She was standing near the edge of a chalk drawing. It stretched out about twice the length of Zuko's bed, a circle enclosing numerous lines and a number of symbols that Azula had never seen before. At the other end of the circle, as far away from the remains of the bed as possible, was a group of four people, clad mostly in the browns and greens of the Earth Kingdom. They were talking to each other, too softly for Azula to make out any of their conversation.

Azula decided to ignore them in favor of more important things, like finding out if Zuko was here. If he had been he would have tumbled off of the bed and landed somewhere behind it, on the outside of the circle. Azula tiptoed around the bed, being careful not to attract to the attention of the Earth Kingdomers on the other side of the circle.

Sure enough, Zuko was lying flat on his back, hidden from the view of the Earth Kingdomers. He hadn't even bothered to untangle himself from his blanket. "Hello, Dum-dum." Azula nudged Zuko with her left foot. "Are you going to lie there all day or-"

Zuko sprang up and grabbed Azula's wrist, yanking her down beside him. Azula only just managed not to let loose an undignified yelp at her mistreatment. "Quiet," Zuko hissed. "We don't want them to hear us."

"They aren't paying attention to us," Azula said, a little more loudly then she would have if Zuko hadn't just told her to be quiet. "I don't think they even know we're here."

"Exactly," Zuko said, "and we can get out of here more easily if they never find out." He kept a tight grip on Azula with one hand as he used the other to unwrap himself from the blanket. Azula could have broken out of his grip, she was a better fighter than him, but she decided that she would rather lose this fight than have to face all four of those Earth Kingdomers with only Zuko for help.

"We must have fallen through a hole in the floor," Azula said. A very strange hole with sharp edges if it had broken the bed like that, but Azula could think of no other explanation. "All we have to do is make our way up to the palace and we're safe." Zuko might not be, given Grandfather's ultimatum, but Azula didn't want to do this alone.

"I don't think that's what happened," Zuko said. He pointed at the ceiling. "There's no hole."

"Earthbenders, Dum-dum." Azula shook her head in mock disappointment. "Honestly, Zuzu, you're so stupid sometimes. So the Earth Kingdom wants to kidnap us. We're the Fire Lord's grandchildren, of course they'd sent a team of elite earthbenders to do it. All they would need to do open the hole in your floor, bring us down here, and seal the hole shut again."

"Maybe you're the Dum-dum." If Azula had said that she would have smiled, especially if she were Zuko who only ever got one over on her because Mom took his side, but Zuko looked as grim as he had when one of the turtle-ducks had started making a strange sort of wheezing sound and walking in circles. "The floor of the palace is made of _wood_. That's not all, the bed is cut perfectly along the edge, I think my blanket is too." Zuko was rolling the blanket up as best he could with one hand, obviously intent on taking it with them.

Azula looked from the bed to the blanket. "You can't see it from here, but there's a circular symbol drawn on the floor. The edge of the circle lines up perfectly with the edge of the bed." At least as far as Azula could tell.

"The circle must be what brought us here," Zuko said. He stood up and Azula stood up with him, rather than waiting to be pulled up. "That's why they aren't paying attention to us. It was some kind of experiment and they're trying to figure out what went wrong with it."

Azula shrugged, not really caring what the Earth Kingdomers were doing as long as they didn't stop her from leaving. "Oh, well. We can't have gone far. All we have to do is find the nearest Fire Nation Solider and they'll take us back home. "

Zuko shook his head. "I don't think it's that simple." He peered around the bed and the group of Earth Kingdomers. "I don't understand a word they're saying. I don't even know what language they're speaking!"

Azula made a small noise of disbelief. "Of course you don't know what they're saying, you can hardly hear them." She tugged her hand out of Zuko's grip. Then, partly as a gesture of appeasement, partly so that she could tug Zuko in the direction she wanted to go, and partly because she was the teeniest bit scared, Azula wrapped her fingers around Zuko's hand.

"I can hear them just fine!" Zuko sounded rather angry, but he didn't let go of Azula's hand. "Besides, I have never seen clothes like that before, not even on that doll Uncle Iroh sent you."

"That doll only had one dress," Azula said. Still, none of these Earth Kingdomer's were wearing dresses, not even the short one with long hair who was probably a woman. So maybe they weren't Earth Kingdomers. Azula brushed that thought aside for more important things. "There's a door, on the other side of that group of people. If we stick to the edge of the room and go very quietly..."

"...we can sneak past them," Zuko finished. He paused and for a second Azula thought he was going to warn her to be quiet, but instead he said, "Good job spotting that door." In a way Azula found that even more irritating than being told to be quiet, like Zuko thought she needed his approval or something.

Azula gave a mocking little bow. "Now let's get moving." She started off towards the edge of the room, pulling Zuko along behind her. After a couple of seconds he was walking along beside her, somehow managing not to make the slightest sound.

Azula kept a close eye on the group of people, but they had stopped talking to each other and started examining the circle, making it even less likely that they would notice Zuko and Azula creeping around behind their backs.

"Let me open the door," Zuko whispered when they were within a few feet of the closed door. Azula nodded, only too happy to let him be the one burdened with it, should the group of people notice him.

Zuko slid the door open a crack, as silently as he had walked across the room. Azula found herself frowning as she slipped through. Obviously, she hadn't been keeping proper tabs on her brother if he had taught himself to move that quietly without her noticing.

Zuko slipped out behind her and Azula heard a soft click as the door shut behind him. They were standing in a windowless hallway, dimly lit by glowing yellow crystals.

"Right or left?" Zuko asked. Azula gave him a funny look, not sure why he wanted _her_ to make a choice. Zuko shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine."

"Left," Azula said. That way the Azula's better arm would be free of the corner if they ran into someone they needed to fight.

Of course there was no one there, and and no one after the next corner, and no one the corner after that. There was also no sign of any way out of the building they were in, not even a window. It was starting to set Azula's nerves on edge.

"I don't think anyone else is in here," Zuko said, after they had circled around fourteen different corners and Azula had no idea how to get back to where they started.

"Don't make conversation for conversation's sake," Azula said, as softly as she could while still being sure that Zuko could hear her. "If someone is here, you won't hear them coming."

Zuko gave Azula a rather nasty look, but he kept his mouth shut.

A little while later, maybe ten minutes, they came to a staircase. It was in its own little room, and Azula thought they might have passed it once before, but it was still a way out. "Let's stop at the next floor and see if we can find windows," Zuko said. "The stairs only go up-"

"So we must be at the bottom. The first floor with windows must be the ground floor," Azula said, in the monotone she used to recite lessons. "I don't need you to explain everything to me, Zuzu."

"Fine," Zuko said, with a bite to his voice that told Azula he was actually bothered by how she brushed off his explanation. "Up the stairs we go." He started up the stairs faster than Azula was comfortable walking, probably trying to make her let go of his hand but Azula held on tight even though she was breathing heavily by the time they made it to the next floor.

Zuko opened the door and motioned for Azula to go through. "Very gallant, Zuzu," Azula said as she stepped through. She looked to her right and found herself staring into the face of a very surprised guard.

He was dressed rather like the people downstairs, in Earth Kingdom colors, but he had an oddly shaped knife at one hip and a pair of cuffs dangling from the other. He had also done something to turn his hair a funny yellowish sort of color.

The guard said something unintelligible. Zuko scooped Azula up and bolted down the hallway. Azula kicked him. "Put me down," she screamed, not caring if anyone heard her. "You won't be able to run like that for very long." Zuko ignored her.

Soon enough, Zuko began to flag and that was enough for the guard chasing them to catch up. In a matter of seconds, Zuko was knocked to the ground. Azula managed to wiggle out of his grip and land on her feet.

Then she attacked, letting loose a blast of fire from her left foot as she kicked out at the guard's head. He screamed as the skin on his face blistered and let go of Zuko. Then, he pulled the oddly shaped knife out and lunged at Azula.

Azula smiled as she danced out of his reach. The guard was laughably incompetent. He wasn't even trying to keep within range of Azula.

There was a odd popping sound, like a firework being shot off, only it was accompanied by a wave of pressure that rattled Azula's teeth. Azula had never felt anything like it before, not even when she had acquired a firecracker and set it off in the gardens to frighten the turtle-ducks.

The back of Azula's shoulder burned. Azula spun around, with considerably less grace than was acceptable in firebending practice but without falling over. There was no one behind her.

Azula was vaguely aware of Zuko getting to his feet and taking the strange knife from the limp hands of the guard, who looked almost as surprised by this turn of events as Azula was, but that was of secondary importance to the fact that the burning sensation had spread along the top of Azula's shoulder and intensified until it was easily the worst pain Azula had felt in her entire life.

A number of other guards came running onto the scene, carrying more oddly shaped knives. They stopped when they saw Zuko and shouted at him in whatever language they spoke. Zuko looked from the knife in his hands to the crowd of guards, then dropped the knife and kicked it away from him.

That was when Azula realized that the floor was sliding sideways, ever so slightly slipping from Azula's right to her left. Azula was forced to hold her arms out like a bird riding a thermal in order to stay upright.

Or at least her right arm. Azula's left arm was not responding to her. Azula looked down at it and saw a hole about as far around as her thumb right through her collarbone.

Azula allowed herself to fall to the floor, thinking in the back of her mind that she would be less likely to injure herself further if she was sitting down. The front of Azula's mind entirely occupied by the fact that her shoulder hurt very, very badly.

Something wet was trickling down Azula's face, and she realized that she was crying. She blinked away the tears and turned her attention back to Zuko, who was now sitting against the wall. The guard Azula had burned was sitting against the other wall, talking to a third one.

Another guard was walking slowly towards Azula, followed by an unarmed man in a long white coat. Azula attempted to stand, or maybe she only thought about standing, because her legs trembled and she did not fall over.

The guard took Azula by her right shoulder and pulled her down until she was lying on her back. Azula tried to yank herself from the guard's grasp, but the movement sent a jolt of pain through her other shoulder and Azula's vision faded away, along with everything else.


	3. Captured

9th Day, Peach Moon, Year of the Tiger  
Prince Zuko

He should not have surrendered. Everything Zuko had been taught in his firebending classes, in his history classes, and from his parents and uncle told him that he should not have given up so easily, without even attempting to fight.

The first guard Zuko had thought he could take, especially when the man had been staring at Azula like he was four years old and Azula was a baby turtle-duck he had dropped onto hot coals, but then five more showed up and Zuko was absolutely certain that if he tried to fight them they would kill him.

So he had allowed himself to be handcuffed and shunted to the side while more guards and what must have been a medic fussed over Azula. Zuko studied the guards while he waited, trying to get a feel for what kind of situation he and Azula had been transported into.

They were wearing Earth Kingdom colors, but not anything that could be considered a uniform. Several of them had bleached hair, like the paintings of Fire Lords six or seven hundred years old, when it had been customary for firebenders to soak their hair in a mixture of vinegar and ash until it was the color of the sun, but none of them had the gold or amber eyes common to firebenders. Most of them had blue eyes– a trait exclusive to the Water Tribes.

Zuko didn't know enough about the Air Nomads to see any similarities between them and his captors.

Their appearance was the most interesting thing about the guards. For a few minutes, Zuko busied himself trying to figure out what they were saying to each other, but then the gibberish all started to blend together and Zuko had to shake himself in order to avoid drifting off to sleep.

Zuko glanced over at the medic treating Azula, wondering what was taking so long. The wound he had seen had not been large enough to merit more than a couple of stitches and it had been at least ten minutes since Zuko had been captured.

Azula wasn't moving.

Zuko had thought that when she had failed to fight the medic and his assistant, it had been because she had seen the futility of resistance and decided to wait until a better time to stage an escape attempt. That was sound military strategy wasn't it, waiting until the opportune moment to strike. It was the kind of thing Azula would think to do. But if Azula had given up and allowed her wound to be treated she would have been wiggling. She would have been tapping her feet in irritation and trying to hurry the medic along. She wouldn't have been lying as limp as a wet rag, putting up no more resistance than a doll being dressed.

Zuko took a step towards her. None of the guards appeared to notice, they were all too preoccupied with the one Azula had burned. Zuko walked over to his sister.

The medic was not actually doing anything to help Azula, instead he was flipping through a little book, occasionally making note of something on the palm of his left hand. The guard helping him was pressing a thick roll of cloth to Azula's wound. Zuko was dismayed to see a spot of blood seep through the center of the cloth.

After what felt like hours standing frozen in shock, the medic said something to his helper and the man lifted the cloth he was holding off of Azula's wound. It was still bleeding profusely and Zuko realized that if it kept up, soon enough Azula wouldn't have any blood left in her.

Zuko kicked the guard in the back of the knee and shoved him, causing the man to topple over sideways. He tore the cloth away from the guard's hands and pressed it back where it had been before, keeping the blood inside of Azula.

Behind Zuko, the guards started shouting. Zuko tuned them out, instead trying to pull Azula away from the medic with his free hand. He succeeded in moving his sister a couple of feet, but then one of the guard came up behind him, grabbed Zuko around the waist and pulled him backwards.

Zuko elbowed the guard in the ribs, making him loosen his grip, but before Zuko could break loose entirely, another guard took him by the right arm and a third by the left.

The first guard muttered something apologetic to the other two, before letting go of Zuko and backing away. Zuko kicked sideways, the only attack he was really capable of at the moment, at the guards holding him, but they didn't so much as wince.

The medic drew a knife and walked towards Azula. Zuko, with a burst of strength he had not previously known he had possessed, wrenched his right arm free. He aimed a blow at the guard holding his left arm and, even though Zuko hadn't really been trying to, a tongue of hot flame shot from his fist and lit the guard's sleeve on fire.

The guard shrieked and let go of Zuko. For perhaps half a second, Zuko was thrilled at his success, but then someone tackled him from behind. Zuko's head cracked painfully against the cement floor. The room spun, just once, before settling such that Zuko was lying on his stomach, with his head twisted sideways so that he was facing Azula and the medic. There was a weight on his back, heavy enough to make breathing a bit of an effort.

As far as Zuko could tell, the medic hadn't been the least bit bothered by his attempt at escape. He had cut the clothing away from Azula's shoulder and was doing something to it, using a stick to trace designs on Azula's skin.

When he finished, the medic touched his fingertips to the design. Little bolts of light flickered across Azula's skin, not unlike the light that coincided with the jolt that had brought Zuko and Azula to this place. Azula stirred, but did not get up.

The medic smiled and nodded to himself, before turning to the half-dozen or so guards watching him. He said something, his voice ringing with authority, and one guard scooped up Azula. The weight disappeared from Zuko's back, and one of the guards yanked Zuko to his feet and dragged him down the hall, following the medic.

Zuko considered struggling, with the hopes that he could break lose, snatch Azula from her kidnappers, and make it away. Then he realized that there wasn't anywhere for him to make it to. As far as he knew everyone within a forty mile radius was in cahoots with this group of guards. The 'guards' might even have been sent directly by the head of state to protect whatever experiment Zuko and Azula had interrupted.

This might be how getting arrested worked.

The medic led the group back down into the basement and through the halls until they reached an area that Zuko and Azula had not seen in all their sneaking around. A section of hallway had been set up as a sort of home base, with most of the doors propped open and personal effects scattered everywhere. It wasn't the neat camp that Zuko would expect from the Fire Nation, but these people probably had lower standards.

The medic opened one of the very few doors that was shut, revealing a small room mostly taken up by a bed. The guard holding Azula slipped into the room only long enough to drop her on the bed. Zuko was shoved in after her and the door was slammed shut behind him. There was a funny sort of clinking sound from the other side of the door, probably the medic locking it.

Zuko hurried over to his sister, very nearly tripping over his own feet in his rush to reach the bed.

Her wound was gone. The design the medic had drawn on was still there, circling around where the wound should have been, but the hole itself was gone.

Zuko poked where it should have been.

Azula gave a little cry from the back of her throat and cracked her eyes open. "Zuzu," she muttered.

She was looking at him, but her eyes didn't quite seem to focus properly. "I'm here," Zuko said. He took hold of her right hand, thinking that she was less likely to be bothered by being touched on her uninjured side.

"I want Dad," Azula said. Her hand twitched, as though she had decided to let go of Zuko's and changed her mind halfway through. "It's too bright in here."

Zuko thought the room was rather dim, being lit mainly by the light coming through a sheet of bubbled glass set in the door. He unwrapped the blanket from around himself and held it between his hands and his shoulder so that it was shading Azula's face. "Is that better?"

"I want Dad," Azula repeated. Then she shook herself, seeming to remember what had happened before she had fainted. "What did they do with us?"

"They did something to your shoulder," Zuko said. "They fixed it. Then they shut is up in here."

For a moment Zuko thought his sister was going to cry. Then she sniffed, the loud wet sniff of someone sucking mucus back into their nose, and spat out, "Why didn't you stop them? You're pathetic, Zuzu. At least I burned that one. You let them lock us up!"

"I burned one too," Zuko snapped. He turned away from Azula, letting the blanket fall onto the bed.

Azula winced, putting up a hand to protect her eyes from the light. "It hurts," she said, so softly that Zuko was probably not meant to hear it.

"But they fixed it," Zuko said. "Your shoulder doesn't have a hole in it anymore." He tried to sneak his hands behind him to check that the door was really locked, but the cuffs prevented him from moving them past his back.

Azula sat up, her eyes still closed. "That doesn't make it hurt less, Dum-dum." She waved her arms in a clumsy attempt at a firebending move found in the advanced sets she was just starting to learn. When Zuko had seen her do it before, perfectly executed at always, it had sent a wave of pale yellow fire across the room that had burned two instructors not smart enough to get out of the way. Now, it sent a handful of sparks flying in Zuko's direction.

"What was that for?"

Azula flopped back down onto the bed, a dull whine coming from the back of her throat.

"You could have hurt me really badly!"

"Go away," Azula mumbled. She rolled onto her side so that she was facing into the corner.

"I can't," Zuko said. "They locked us in here, remember?" Now that Azula wasn't watching him, Zuko turned around so that he could reach the doorknob. He fiddled with it a bit, but he couldn't get the door open no matter how hard he pushed.

"Then be quiet," Azula said. There was a crackle to her voice that Zuko had never heard before. "I want to sleep." She kicked out with her legs, and it took Zuko a second to realize that she was feeling around for the blanket he had dropped on the bed.

Zuko picked the blanket up and laid it over his sister. "You can sleep if you want to. _I'm_ not tired."

Azula did not answer. Her breathing had fallen into the deep, even rhythm of sleep more quickly than Zuko believed she could really fall asleep, but Zuko didn't call her out on it. It was probably for the best that she sleep as much as she could, what with her injury and all.

It would be smart for Zuko to sleep now too, when their captors weren't likely to interrupt them for a while, but he was far too tense to even lay down. It was like their was a motor in his legs, pushing him to move and move and move even though his eyes were starting to ache and his head was fuzzy.

Zuko started pacing. Six steps from the door to the opposite wall. Turn around. Six steps from the wall to the door. Repeat.

It didn't do anything to calm him, but eased the ache in Zuko's legs so he kept at it, long past the point where Azula's breathing changed again and Zuko was sure she had really fallen asleep.


	4. Not Xing

April 15, 1918  
Philo Jenkins

For a moment, he had thought they had succeeded. Then the woman had screamed and Philo had realized that, while this very well might be Xing, it was definitely not the town square of Wei Tu, where he had meant to end up.

Philo had quite promptly been surrounded by soldiers in red armor. They shouted at him, in a language he could not understand. Philo tried to answer them, first in Amestrian, then Xingese, then what little he knew of Drachman, but they did not seem to understand him.

Philo took a piece of chalk out of his pocket and began to write on the floor, thinking that maybe his accent was getting in the way. The soldiers took exception to that. One of them kicked the chalk from Philo's hands, while two more grabbed hold of Philo's arms and yanked him onto his feet.

"I'm sorry," Philo said, even though he knew it wouldn't do any good. "I don't understand what you want me to do."

The soldiers had obviously decided that trying to talk to Philo was a waste of time, because they were completely silent as they cuffed him and led him out of the room. Philo knew better than to resist. He was no combat alchemist capable of raining death and destruction on countless enemies. He just knew a little theory and could be counted on to copy out the transportation circle properly.

The woman who had screamed, she no longer looking frightened but instead downright furious, gave a few quick orders and the soldiers saluted. Philo had a little time to wonder where he had ended up, that a screaming woman could summon soldiers in under a minute, soldiers who answered to her rather than merely being alert for trouble, before he was yanked down the hall.

The decor was vaguely Xingese, but it was Xingese in the manner of a quarter-Xingese Amestrian native trying to get in touch with their roots rather than a recent immigrant keeping hold of their origins. But that wasn't quite right either, because there was nothing at all Amestrian about that place.

Could Claudia have overshot and landed him someplace past Xing? That would explain something being off about the place and the fact that no one here understood Philo.

It occurred to Philo that, if the original transportation circle was flawed, the reverse transportation circle might land him in Aeurgo or someplace even farther away if he tried to use it. He brushed the thought away almost as quickly as it came. After all, he didn't have much choice but to use the circle, unless he wanted to abandon his comrades and spend the remainder of his life here.

After about five minutes of walking through the building they were in, the soldiers led Philo outside. Philo wasn't much of an astronomer, but he looked up at the night sky anyway, thinking that if he could see where the constellations were he might have an idea of how far he had gone.

No luck. All the constellations were exactly where Philo remembered them being two nights ago when he had snuck out to the roof to stargaze with Xandra. But that had been later in the night, maybe ten o'clock and it wasn't past eight right now. Which meant he had gone east. Maybe.

One of the soldiers, obliviously displeased by Philo slowing down to gaze heavenward, gave him a jab in the ribs to wake him up. It worked. For the next several minutes, the time it took them to get to the guardhouse or prison or wherever suspicious people who appeared out of thin air were detained, Philo could think of nothing but how annoying it was to be arrested.

Most of the soldiers who had brought him in did not hang around to watch Philo being booked. The only one who remained had a slightly different uniform than the others and was probably the squad leader.

He talked the prison guard through the entire thing. Even though the words the pair of them were speaking meant absolutely nothing to Philo, he thought he could understand their conversation. It was something along the lines of:

'So we found this guy busting up the Armstrong family mansion. Good luck getting him to give you his name, he only speaks gibberish.'

'Eh, I'll just call him John Smith. Looks about thirty, wouldn't you say?'

'Yeah. Hey, you could make today his birthday! Wouldn't that be funny?'

'I'll just put down 'unknown'. We'll let the shrinks worry about figuring all that stuff out.'

There was a nod, a handshake, and the squad leader was gone.

The prison guard led Philo back into the cells. There were only a handful of them, most of them stone with metal bars, but one was lined with wood and had wooden bars. There was a woman in that cell, her hands cuffed together like Philo's.

The guard paused in front of her, obviously considering putting Philo in with her.

She smiled at him. It was a creepy sort of smile, something that Philo couldn't quite place was _off_ about it, and it apparently scared the guard too because he marched down Philo down to the end of the cell block and opened the cell farthest from her.

Before stepping inside, Philo look the guard in the eyes and held out his manacled wrists. He tried to look as harmless as possible, as though their was nothing to fear from letting his hands free. Not like that maniac in the wooden cell.

The guard was making the comparison too, judging from the way he looked from Philo to the woman and back again.

Philo whimpered, sticking out his lip in an expression he hadn't used since he had stopped living with his mother. It was a dirty trick, but it had never failed him before.

The guard sighed and unlocked Philo's handcuffs.

Philo smiled a big goofy grin that was only a little bit exaggerated and hugged the guard. See, totally harmless madman.

The guard stiffened, but he didn't push Philo off until the woman in the wooden cell started giggling. Then he shoved Philo in the cell, locked it, and went back to his desk at the front of the prison.

Philo reached into the pocket of his jacket, feeling for his spare piece of chalk. He smiled when he found it. Sooner or later the woman in the wooden cell would fall asleep. And when she did-

It couldn't be _that_ hard to sneak back into the mansion long enough to draw one little circle.


	5. Bluffing

10th Day, Peach Moon, Year of the Tiger  
Prince Ozai

Ozai had been expecting to be summoned before the Fire Lord as early as possible that morning. He had prepared for it, planned out everything he would say carefully so that this time he wouldn't make a fool out of himself.

All that planning went out the window when he was summoned, not to the throne room where Azulon could look intimidating behind a curtain of fire, but to the Fire Lord's private sitting room. If Azulon hadn't made it quite plain what he thought of his younger son last night, Ozai might have thought that his father had decided to actually care about him or something.

Azulon had certainly preferred to met with _Iroh_ in a less formal setting.

It was only when he was nodding himself past the pair of guards outside Azulon's chambers that Ozai realized that Azulon might be trying to put him off of balance so that he was less of an opponent. Or maybe the old man was starting to feel his years and didn't want to wear himself out with the curtain of fire.

The more Ozai thought about it the likelier that second idea seemed and he was somewhat surprised to enter the sitting room and see Azulon up and about, brewing tea of all things. Funny– Ozai had always thought that Iroh's obsession had come from their mother.

Azulon gestured for Ozai to sit and so Ozai perched himself on the edge of the chair nearest the door, inwardly marveling at how totally bizarre this was. He hadn't had a private conversation with his father since... he couldn't remember _ever_ having one. Iroh had always been there, even when they had been discussing _Ozai's_ courtship and _Ozai's_ future children.

Azulon poured two cups of tea, set them out, and sat down in the other chair. He looked Ozai in the eye and in that instant Ozai knew that he was sitting here rather than in the throne room not because Azulon was old or wanted to put him off balance or show affection or anything like that, but because in the throne room, in dim light with a fire between them, Azulon would have a much harder time telling if Ozai was lying to him.

To avoid being the one to start the conversation, Ozai took a sip of his tea.

Azulon followed suit. When he sat his cup back down he said, "I'm prepared to admit that I underestimated you."

Ozai took another sip of tea, his features carefully schooled into a mask of indifference even though he had no idea what Azulon was talking about.

Azulon nodded as though Ozai's silence had been statement of some meaning, and perhaps to him it had been. Ozai's father had always been able to figure out what he was up to when he was a child. "When you told me that accepted my judgment and were prepared to carry it out, I assumed that you were going to kill Zuko."

"That was what you had ordered me to do, Father," Ozai said. He tried not to let it show in his voice, but he was rather irritated that this was turning into yet another game of 'guess what Daddy wants'.

Azulon took another sip of tea, but the cup couldn't cover up the frown that crossed his features ever so briefly. "No, I told you that you could not keep him. Did you really think that, after losing one grandchild, I would destabilize our line of succession further by ordering the death of another?"

In all honestly, Ozai had thought that his father was starting to get senile and thought that Ozai would be terribly distraught at the idea of losing his only son. "Who am I to question the will of the Fire Lord?"

"I'm getting rather tired of dancing around the issue," Azulon said. "The lengths you went to to protect him, if you truly thought I wished his death, show that you care very deeply for the child whatever you might claim."

"And what lengths might those be?" Ozai had a sinking suspicion that it had something to do with Zuko and Azula's disappearance last night. Did the Fire Lord really think that Ozai had been able to spirit two children out of the royal palace with no one noticing?

Azulon raised an eyebrow. "I would have expected you to be eager to take credit. Finding a trustworthy earthbender on such short notice is no mean feat. Not to mention all the guards you would have had to have bribed. I'm impressed."

If Ozai had had any idea where his children were, he would have gladly announced that he had staged the entire thing. As it was, taking credit would mean either finding both his children very quickly and without any help (not very likely) or making up a story about how they had met a tragic demise. Zuko would be no loss, but Azula was nearly perfect. He couldn't quite bring himself to lose her.

"Incidentally, I fired all the guards involved. If they'll take money from you, they'll take it from anyone." Azulon gave Ozai a sharp look. "And I would appreciate it if you didn't subvert any more of my guards. Finding replacements is always a headache."

"I'll keep that in mind," Ozai said. Deciding that the best way for him to get some time to consider his options would be to distract the Fire Lord, he asked, "So if you didn't intend for Zuko's death to be my punishment, what did you want me to do?"

"Mostly, I wanted to see what you would do." Which made this entire mess yet another one of Father's stupid tests. Only, Ozai might not have failed this time. "You could have suggested that Iroh adopt Zuko as his son. That would have met the punishment I had given you. You could have begged me to take my anger out on you rather than an innocent child. Or you could have killed the child that you obviously favored less in hopes of appeasing me. Those were the only options I considered."

Azulon had thought of all that in the two minutes between Ozai's making his request and naming his punishment? No wonder Ozai always failed his tests, if he was expected to think that much about inconsequential things. "And you were willing to let me walk away thinking that I needed to kill my only son."

"I was sure that if you had objected to it, you would have done something about it before you left." A strange expression that might have been disappointment crossed Azulon's face, before he took another sip of tea. "I thought that you would have begged for mercy if you really thought you had no other options."

Ozai bit back his retort that begging was for weaklings and he would die before he lowered himself to beg for his life, much less that of his worthless son. Instead he said, "When has begging for mercy _ever_ been effective on you?"

Azulon visibly bristled, probably upset that he had miscalculated so badly. Ozai had to take a very large sip of tea to stop himself from laughing. "I can be merciful," Azulon said, in a tone very much like Zuko's when he insisted that he _was_ good at firebending. "I'm just not in the habit of being merciful to people who don't deserve it."

"If they deserve it, then it's not really mercy is it?" Ozai countered. That had been in one of those philosophy books he had read when he was fourteen and still thought that if he did all the right things his father would finally start paying attention to him.

"Let's not get sidetracked into a debate on virtues," Azulon said in an airy tone that made Ozai suspect that he'd never really thought about any of this before. "Where did you hide Zuko and Azula?"

"I sent them on a boat to the colonies," Ozai said, as smoothly as though he had never considered saying anything else. "I can have them back in a couple of days, if you wish it. _And_ if you promise that no harm will come to them."

"They were never in any danger from _me_ ," Azulon said. Ozai grit his teeth at the emphasis, and at the implication that _his_ stupidity was the only possible danger to the children. "I'm still going to have Iroh adopt Zuko."

Ozai dropped his teacup, splattering tea and shards of porcelain all over his lap. " _Why_?"

"Consider it punishment for your presumption," Azulon said. He waved his right hand in a gesture usually reserved for dismissing an inferior. "I told you that you would be punished by the loss of your eldest and while your method of dealing with the situation was inventive, I won't have my only remaining grandchildren raised by servants in the colonies. Unless you have a compelling reason why I should not?"

There was a hint of challenge to the question and Ozai was quite sure that, if he said the right thing, then he would be able to get out of this entire mess with nothing more than some unpleasant memories. "You really want _Zuko_ to end up as Fire Lord?"

Azulon leaned forward, resting his forehead on the tip of his index finger. "You might be unaware of this, but Zuko is going to end up as Fire Lord eventually."

Ozai hadn't thought much about who would succeed him, because there had never been any doubt in his mind as to who his true heir was. "Azula-"

"Is Zuko's _younger sister_. Do you really think you can convince the Fire Sages to crown her ahead of him?"

"The Fire Sages will crown whoever the Fire Lord names as his heir," Ozai said. They hadn't always, in the past a savvy Prince – and it almost always had been a Prince, no matter what the Sages said about equality of the sexes – could have the Fire Lord's will overthrown and claim the throne for himself.

Of course, whoever he outed would almost always challenge him to an Agni Kai and, frequently enough, win. If the Fire Sages, for some unfathomable reason, decided to crown Zuko Fire Lord, Ozai had no doubt that Azula would win the resulting Agni Kai. She was a prodigy after all, and Zuko could barely bend.

But none of that bore mentioning to the current Fire Lord. "Wasn't that the point of all those purges?" he asked instead. "To make sure the Fire Sages were loyal to the Fire Lord?"

"The point of the purges," Azulon said in the tone he reserved for when he thought that Ozai should have already figured out something on his own, "was to remove from power those among the Fire Sages who were likely to support the Avatar should he threaten the Fire Nation. _Not_ to create a group of sycophants willing to parrot whatever the Fire Lord says."

Ozai was tempted to ask what the difference was, but he thought that he might come out of this looking smarter if he kept his mouth shut, at least on that topic. "If you want Zuko to be Fire Lord so badly, why didn't you call of your... test off. You said you thought that I was going to kill him."

"It wouldn't have been a proper test if I had let you off early," Azulon said. Ozai had expected him to be flippant about it, since he couldn't care _that_ much about someone he was willing to let die, but he seemed deadly serious. "I would only have only learned what you thought I wanted to hear. I wouldn't have learned that, given the proper incentive, you're capable of staging a kidnapping in under two hours."

"That wasn't what I meant," Ozai said. Once again, it appeared as though he would be explaining everything to his father twice. "What would you have done if I _had_ killed Zuko?"

"Had you arrested for murder and used your incarceration and Zuko's death to pressure Iroh to marry again," Azulon said matter-of-factly.

"So no matter what I did I was being cut out of the line of succession," Ozai said. If he hadn't already known that Azulon hated him he might have been hurt.

"You were the one who reacted to your only nephew's death will an inappropriate and ill-considered bid for the throne," Azulon said. "Not to mention an obviously staged attempt to curry favor by showing off your daughter."

Ozai opened his mouth to protest that any 'showing off' had been completely spur of the moment, but was interrupted by Azulon adding, "Yes, it _was_ obvious. I do occasionally look into what my grandchildren are doing and it would have been hard to miss the enormous fuss you made when Azula made first dan. So when you claimed that Azula was going to demonstrate what she was learning and she showed me a set from first kyu..."

He had not been as impressed as Ozai had expected him to be. Well, Ozai had already figured _that_ out. "I see," Ozai said. "The adoption won't take place until Iroh returns from the war front, will it?" That would give him a couple of weeks to think of something.

"It won't," Azulon said. "But don't get any ideas. You won't be able to wiggle out of this one."

"Of course not, Father." Ozai stood up and brushed off the front of his robes. "Now, may I be excused. Ursa doesn't know that I staged the kidnapping, and I would hate to let her worry for any longer than necessary." Also, he needed to find a ship that set sail to the colonies last night and had met with an unfortunate accident on the way.

"Very well. You are dismissed."

* * *

A/N: Kyu and dan originated in Japan as a way to rank skill in various disciplines, with kyu being 'student' ranks that count down to competence and dan being 'master' ranks that count up from competence. There's not really anything in the show to point to the Fire Nation using that kind of system (Master Yu's Earthbending Academy aside), but I could see them having some sort of national standard for firebending instruction. It also helps me wrap my head around how Zuko and Azula's skill is going to be changed relative to the show.


	6. Playing Hooky

10th Day, Peach Moon, Year of the Tiger  
Lazuli

Lazuli was supposed to be in school right now, or at home laid up in bed with swamp fever, not walking through Caldera City in her play clothes without so much as a maid to accompany her. And if wandering around the city was infinitely preferable to staying home and listening to her parents fight or going to school and listening to the other girls making snide remarks about 'those backwards colonials', then Lazuli was supposed to smile, bite back whatever retort she was thinking, and go to school and come home anyway.

The most galling bit was that, as Mother and Father had both been raised in the Colonies like their children, Lazuli was reasonably certain that _they_ would never have put up with this. _They_ would have run away and joined the circus or something. Lazuli would have done that too, if she had been willing to leave Meixing behind.

Because Meixing couldn't be out and about, at least until she stopped having accidents all the time. Here in the Homelands, especially in the Capitol, they were stricter about _everything_. Class distinctions, clothing styles, entertainment, and most importantly, bending.

Lazuli kicked a rock, sending it flying across the mostly-empty street. It made her feel a bit better, so she kicked another one. And another. And another. No one paid much attention, although Lazuli knew that if Meixing had been here making the rocks move with her frustration they probably would have had the Home Guard in to cart her off. It wasn't _fair_.

There was a flash of light. Lazuli only caught it out of the corner of her eye, but it was bright enough to make her curious as to what had made it. It couldn't be firebending, because it hadn't had an orange tint. It had lasted far too quickly for it to be from a candle. And why would someone set off a firework in the middle of the day?

Lazuli headed over to where the light had come from and found her way blocked– by a stone wall that she was _very_ sure hadn't been there yesterday. And even if she hadn't been sure, the blocky marks on it, like it had been chiseled out of a quarry and no one had bothered to smooth out the rough edges, would have told her that it didn't belong here.

Since Lazuli wasn't an earthbender, she ran around to the other side of the alley, hoping that whoever had made the wall was still around. But her way was blocked by another wall. That settled it, someone interesting was hiding in that alley. Lazuli dragged on of the rubbish bins over so that she could use it to give herself a lift.

Two minutes later, Lazuli was plopping down next to the strangest person she had ever seen in real life. He had blue Water Tribe eyes, but his skin wasn't Water Tribe dark, and he wasn't dressed like a Water Tribesman either. At least, not like any of the Water Tribesmen Lazuli had seen pictures of, with their thick blue coats and beaded hair.

"Closing off the ends of the alley like that wasn't very smart," Lazuli told the man. "People will notice if they can't get through to dump rubbish here."

The man did not answer. He looked at Lazuli warily, the way a komodo rhino who had never been ridden might look at someone approaching it with a saddle.

"Don't worry," Lazuli said. "I won't hurt you. But if you're trying to hide from someone, you might want to find someplace else."

The man still did not answer. Maybe he was deaf, like all the new servants Mother and Father had hired since they had moved to the Capitol.

Lazuli tried making the hand signals for 'you', 'move', and 'caught', but the man only looked confused. So either Lazuli hadn't gotten them right, or he wasn't actually deaf. There was one way to find out. Lazuli pointed to herself and said, slowly and clearly, "La-zu-li."

Then she pointed to the man. He curled a hand towards himself and shrugged his shoulders.

Lazuli rolled her eyes, pointed to herself again, and repeated, "Lazuli."

"Lazuli," the man repeated. Seeming to understand what she was trying to do he pointed to himself and said, "Failo."

"Failo," Lazuli said. She smiled. "So you can hear. Or I suppose you could read lips. Does it help if I talk slower?"

Failo smiled back, but did not give any other answer.

"This isn't working," Lazuli said, more to herself than to Failo. "Let's try this." She took Failo's hand and began to drag him towards the other end of the alley. "Come on, this end is less likely to have people in it."

Failo, after obediently following Lazuli for half a dozen steps, suddenly tore his hand from Lazuli's grip. He looked absolutely terrified at the prospect of leaving his alleyway.

Lazuli adopted her most patient tone, although she had to try very hard not to sound like she thought Failo was stupid. "Look, I know people here don't like earthbenders and this seems like a very good place to hide from them, but it's not. It would be much better if you came back to my house with me. I promise I won't turn you in, my sister Meixing's an earthbender, so I don't have nothing against that."

Failo shook his head. He turned around and plopped himself down so that his back was to Lazuli. Failo's stomach grumbled and he hunched over a bit as though he were embarrassed.

"If you won't take charity, then you don't have to," Lazuli said. "You could teach Meixing earthbending. I'm sure Mother and Father would think that would be worth room and board. _I_ think it is." She fumbled around in her pockets, taking longer than a girl her age should have to find the pastry she had stashed there before she left for school.

Lazuli dropped it in Failo's lap. "Sorry, that's all I've got right now. If you want more you have to come back to the house." And teach Meixing earthbending, that was feeling more and more important the more Lazuli thought about it. If Meixing knew how to earthbend properly, Lazuli was sure, she would stop having accidents. And if she stopped having accidents, then she wouldn't have to stay home all the time. And if she didn't have to stay home all the time, then she could come out and play with Lazuli and walk to school with her and do all the other things big sisters were supposed to do.

Failo picked the pastry up and gobbled it down so quickly that Lazuli couldn't see how he had time to chew. When it was all gone he turned around and looked at Lazuli with wide, pleady eyes, like Uncle Tuyen's cat had looked at people holding fish.

"That's all I have right now," Lazuli said. "You have to let me take you home if you want more." She held her hand out and Failo took it.

They made it all the way over to the wall before Lazuli realized that she wasn't sure how to get over it. There were no rubbish bins on this side and while Lazuli could probably stand on Failo, he might not like that very much and then _he_ would have to get over the wall somehow.

Fortunately, Failo was thinking a little more clearly than Lazuli. He let go of Lazuli's hand, took a piece of chalk out of his pocket, and drew a design on the wall. He touched it with his fingertips and lightning crackled across the wall.

"So that was the light I saw," Lazuli said. "How come it makes light if it's _earthbending_?" A tiny piece of her thought that Failo might answer a technical question about how his bending worked, but he remained silent as ever.

As Lazuli watched, the wall melted back into the ground, leaving behind a stretch of stone marred by the same chisel marks that had been on the wall.

"Now, we'll take the quiet streets so that fewer people see us," Lazuli said. She took Failo's hand and led him down the best route to her house. "Also, we'll arrive closer to lunch time. But we're going to go in the back door so that Mother and Father won't see us because they think I'm in school right now–"


	7. Earthbending?

10th Day, Peach Moon, Year of the Tiger  
Meixing

"–I've told you before, we can't leave Caldera City now. So I've sorted out all of the loose ends Lan Zi left behind, that doesn't mean there's nothing left to do here. Even if the family business wasn't centered here–"

"As if the family business had anything to do with it! You're still trying to make some kind of political venture out of this mess, although with your tainted blood–"

"Don't you dare bring my mother into this, you fabricated harridan. Not when _your_ family–"

"Was that supposed to be an insult? My little brother had a sharper tongue when he was _three._ At least he could–"

There was no point in listening any longer. Once Mother and Father had started in on the shouting, they could go on for hours without saying they hadn't said hundreds of times before. Meixing was better off heading to her room where the thick walls could muffle the insults enough so that she couldn't entirely make them out.

If she practiced the tsugi horn her parents had bought her as an early birthday present, she might not be able to tell that they were shouting at each other. And if she practiced for long enough Meixing might develop enough skill that Lazuli would stop saying that it sounded like she was strangling turtle-ducks in her room.

Meixing was so preoccupied planning out what songs she was going to butcher in this practice session that she had already shut herself in her room and pulled out her tsugi horn case before she realized that she wasn't alone.

Lazuli was sitting on her bed. And if that weren't bad enough she had a _man_ sitting next to her, and not one that Meixing recognized. "Who is that?" Meixing pointed at the man, who was happily munching on fire flakes.

"His name is Failo," Lazuli said. "He's going to teach you earthbending. He doesn't talk, but he's–"

"How is he supposed to teach me earthbending if he can't talk?" Meixing asked. "More importantly, what were you _thinking_ , bringing a strange man home? How do you know he's friendly? He could be a wanted murderer for all you know."

" _He's not_ ," Lazuli said. She was snuffing a bit, like she might start crying if Meixing pushed her any further, but she looked more angry that anything else. "He was hiding because people were mean to him and wouldn't let him buy any food. So I told him he could come live with us if he taught you earthbending."

"Are you sure of that?" Lazuli had a history of repeating stories as totally true when she had actually made them entirely up. Meixing didn't think she did on purpose, Lazuli just had a tendency to fill in the blanks and forget that she didn't know for sure what really happened.

" _Yes_." Lazuli's fingers were curled into claws and smoke was drifting off of her palms. The strange man slid away from her, staring at her hands as though she had done something much more remarkable than losing control of her firebending.

"Hands," Meixing said. "And get off my bed, both of you. You'll get crumbs all over my sheets."

Lazuli hopped off the bed without needing a second order, but she had to grab the man's hand and pull him down onto the floor with her. He shied away from her touch, probably afraid that Lazuli would burn him. She couldn't, not when she was only smoking, but if the man was from the Earth Kingdom proper and not the Fire Nation Colonies in the Earth Kingdom he wasn't likely to know that.

"Lazuli, he's not a pet," Meixing said, thinking that this might be the better way to get her sister to see reason. "You can't keep him. And Mother and Father never bothered finding anyone to teach me earthbending back when we lived in the Colonies, what makes you think they'll change their mind now that we're in the Homelands and earthbending is a really big deal?"

"You have more accidents here," Lazuli said through a mouthful of fire flakes. "And they're all taking about how bad it would be if anyone saw. If Failo taught you earthbending, you would stop having accidents and then you wouldn't have to stay home all the time."

" _You_ didn't stop having accidents when you started firebending lessons," Meixing said. That might not have been a terribly fair comparison, since Lazuli had started firebending lessons only two days after the first time she had accidentally started a fire, but Mother had brought it up the only time that Father had suggested hiring Meixing a private earthbending tutor.

"Of course not," Lazuli said, with a flick of her hair that she must have learned at school. "When I stop having accidents, then I won't have to take firebending lessons anymore."

"Yes you will," Meixing said, "because you don't just have firebending lessons so that you stop lighting curtains on fire when you're mad about something. You're supposed to be learning to fight too. Don't you want to be a solider like Uncle Tuyen was." That was what Meixing had wanted when she was Lazuli's age. She had been very upset to learn that earthbenders couldn't join the army.

"I don't like fighting," Lazuli said. "I like helping people better. Besides, all the soldiers end up dead."

"No, they don't," Meixing said. "What about Grandmama?"

"She's dead isn't she?" There was something in the flippant way Lazuli said it that would have made Meixing scream at her, if Mother and Father weren't around to hear and investigate.

"Not in the war. She was seventy-two, you monkey-brained platypus-bear."

Lazuli did not react to the insult, instead pursing her lips in an expression of thoughtfulness. "Yeah, but something really bad happened to her when she was fighting. Not even Uncle Tuyen would tell me about it. It was so bad that she quit the army and had Father."

Meixing was very sure that that was not quite what had happened, but there were certain things that she wasn't about to explain to her baby sister. "So you don't want to join the army, that's fine, but it's still a good idea for you to know how to firebend properly so that you can defend yourself in case someone tries to hurt you."

"And you should learn how to earthbend properly so that you can defend yourself too," Lazuli said. She was smiling, obviously thinking more about how she could best convince Meixing rather than what the things she was saying actually meant. "I don't know why Mom and Dad didn't think of it?"

Probably because they were too busy making sure that Meixing knew all the horrible things that would happen to her if she didn't stop having accidents. "People don't like earthbenders very much, Lazuli. They were afraid that I'd get in trouble for fighting with earthbending."

Lazuli considered this for a moment, then said, "People are stupid."

"I suppose I have to agree with you there," Meixing said. She turned to look at the man Lazuli had brought home. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor, far more focused on his fire flakes than on either of the girls. "Everyone was being mean to him, so you told him that Mom and Dad would pay him to teach me earthbending?

"Yep." Lazuli looked entirely too proud of herself. "I bet he could teach you lots of really cool earthbending. I saw him make walls! And he could put them back in the ground too."

Good. Cleaning up whatever mess they made would be the most important part of any earthbending lessons. "We should probably start with something smaller that doesn't require ripping up the floorboards."

"Okay." Lazuli snatched a jade paperweight, the expensive one that had been Meixing's last birthday present from Grandmama, off of Meixing's desk and handed it to her man.

Fortunately, he didn't have any time to do anything more than stare at it before Meixing had plucked it from his grasp and handed him the ugly ornamental vase Mother had bought her in hopes that having more earth in her room would give Meixing a better attitude.

The man didn't seem to have a better idea what to do about the vase then he had the paperweight. He looked from it to Lazuli to Meixing and shrugged his shoulders.

"You're supposed to earthbend it," Lazuli said. "Turn it into a ball or something." That was a bit of a strange thing for Lazuli to ask him to do, considering that Meixing moved earth far more easily than she shaped it, but it was a 'simple' thing that wouldn't make too much of a mess.

The man didn't appear to have understood a word Lazuli had said. Perhaps his silence was more that simply 'not talking'.

Lazuli rolled her eyes and reached into the man's pocket, pulling out a piece of chalk. She doodled on the vase with it and said, "Earthbend it like you did the walls you made."

The man smiled, took the chalk from Lazuli, and used it to draw a complicated geometric away on the floor. "What is he doing?" Meixing asked.

"He's going to earthbend it, just watch," Lazuli said.

When he had finished his drawing, the man placed the vase on top of it. He touched his fingertips to the edge of the drawing and bolts of light, like small ozoneless strikes of lightning, coursed across the vase. They seemed to melt it and the vase curled in on itself until the light was gone and there was a small sculpture of a songbird sitting where the vase had been.

"That is not earthbending," Meixing said.

"Yes it is,"Lazuli said. "It's like combustion is for firebending, only you don't have to have the marks on you. I think it's more for changing shapes then for moving rocks around, but–"

"Lazuli, combustion bending is _dangerous_. Even if you do it right, you can end up with all kinds of problems. All you have to do is mess up your chi flow once and BAM! there goes half your memory, or your sense of judgment, or your ability to talk–" Speaking of which, Lazuli claimed this guy could talk, but he hadn't said a word in ten minutes of listening to Meixing and Lazuli. He hadn't even seemed to care what they were saying.

"Failo can talk," Lazuli said. "I heard him say his name."

"Is that they only thing he can say?" Meixing asked. If so, it was completely possible that 'Failo' wasn't his name at all, just some word that he fancied the sound of.

"Of course not," Lazuli said. "You can say lots of other things, can't you, Failo?"

'Failo' smiled, but did not answer.

"He can!" Lazuli shouted. Then, seeming to remember that she was supposed to be walking home from school right now, she said more quietly, "Here, let's try this." She pointed to Failo.

"Failo," he said. Then he pointed at Lazuli. "Lazuli." He pointed at Meixing.

"Meixing," she said.

He nodded.

So he could remember names. "Has he said anything else?" Meixing asked.

"He doesn't need to," Lazuli said. "I can figure out what he wants even if he doesn't talk." Meaning, that anything she claimed to have learned from Failo ought to be considered suspect until Meixing had a chance to get a second opinion on the matter.

"So this combustion earthbending has done something to his brain," Meixing said. And, of course, Lazuli thought it was a great idea for her to learn to do this.

"He might have always been like that," Lazuli said. "Remember when we lived in the Colonies and there was that one boy who worked for the baker and had never learned to talk. Besides, this earthbending doesn't involve moving chi near your brain, so it can't be that dangerous."

Meixing was tempted to add that the words 'doesn't' and 'can't' should both be 'shouldn't', but she thought that on the balance Lazuli was more likely to be right then not and she did want to at least try this strange earthbending. "Fine," she said, "I'll try it once, but if anything bad happens it's all your fault."

"Nothing bad's going to happen," Lazuli said. She picked the piece of chalk Failo had used and handed it to Meixing. "Now copy the drawing Failo did for it. I think the drawing's different depending on what you're earthbending. This circle doesn't look very much like the wall one."

"Right," Meixing said. She pulled the sculpture of bird off of Failo's array and set it down outside the circle, but before she could do more than draw the circle out on the floor Failo snatched the chalk from her hands. "Hey, how am I supposed to learn earthbending if you don't let me use your chalk?"

Failo looked at her thoughtfully, tapping the chalk against his chin as he considered the matter. At least that's what Meixing hoped he was doing. For all she knew, he could be planning to eat the chalk.

After several seconds, Failo drew a simpler array on the floor, taking care to make sure that Meixing was keeping track of every stroke of his chalk. When he finished it, he placed the songbird on it and activated the array.

The songbird disappeared in a rush of light and was replaced by a perfect sphere of stone. Half a second later it was a songbird again, courtesy of the first array. Only then did Failo hand the chalk back to Meixing.

She took it and copied the simple array, the sphere-array as it was easiest to think of it, onto the floor in front of her. The copy was a bit different from the original, Meixing's circle was almost an oval and that made her square a bit off-kilter, but it looked good enough.

Meixing placed the songbird on her array and touched the edge to activate it, thinking very hard about spheres, just in case that was part of how it worked. Lightning shot out from the circle and the bird sort of _melted_ until it no longer looked much like a bird. Unfortunately, it didn't much resemble a sphere either.

Lazuli patted Meixing's arm sympathetically. "It took me loads of tries to figure out making a fireball on purpose. You'll figure it out eventually."

"It's not that," Meixing said. She stood up and kicked her foot against the floor, one of the few proper earthbending moves she knew. The stone lump that used to be a songbird flew into her hands. "It's that it doesn't _feel_ like earthbending, with the drawing and the lightning. It's got it's own power, but it's not the same."

"Maybe you just aren't used to it yet," Lazuli said. She sounded small and not at all certain and Meixing could practically hear the question behind them: Are you going to tell Mother and Father and have them send Failo away?

That would be the smart thing to do. The safe thing to do. And Mother and Father were sure to think that it was the right thing to do. But if Meixing did that, she would never get a chance to figure out if this thing with the chalk and the circle was earthbending or not. Nor would she have an opportunities to learn what was going on with Failo.

Not to mention the fact that Lazuli, who was generally the most cheerful person in the house, would mope for at least a week over it. Before they left the Colonies, she would have whined and put up enough of a fuss that Mother and Father would have wished they had let her have her way. Meixing was not sure of that now. Two months in the Royal Fire Academy for Girls had _done_ things to Lazuli, where Meixing couldn't see. Now, it was difficult to tell what Lazuli would do about anything.

"Maybe," Meixing said. "The only way to know for sure is to practice." Kneeling down again, she drew another circle on the floor. It came out rather better than her first attempt. "Lots and lots of practice."


	8. Awakening

10th Day, Peach Moon, Year of the Tiger  
Princess Azula

It was long past sunrise when Azula finally woke. Her tongue was sticky from sleeping with her mouth open and there was a tiredness that had settled into her limbs, as though she had come down with the flu again. "Mother," Azula called, knowing that Father was not likely to have any sympathy for weakness, even if it was from the flu.

"She's not here," Zuko said from somewhere nearby. There was the shuffling of feet and then a weight on the edge of Azula's bed. "What do you remember from last night?"

"Everything," Azula said, even though most of it was rather hazy. There had been a meeting with Grandfather, she remembered Zuzu falling over trying to firebend perfectly, and then Grandfather had decreed that Zuko was no longer a member of the royal family and she had gone to his room to gloat about it. And then... "Please don't tell me that we're still being held prisoner by a bunch of Earth Kingdom traitors."

"They're definitely not Earth Kingdom," Zuko said. There was an edge to his voice, like he was trying to be funny.

If he hoped to deflect Azula's righteous anger with humor, than he was in for a nasty surprise. "So you spent all night sitting in this room, twiddling your thumbs and not even _trying_ to escape?" She sat up in bed and glared at her brother.

"The door is locked," Zuko said.

"You could have burned it down," Azula said, although a traitorous voice in the back of her head whispered that the door looked very solid and trying to burn through it while locked in such a tiny space was likely to asphyxiate them both, if it didn't catch something else on fire. "You're so useless. No wonder Grandfather decided to get rid of you."

"He didn't!" Zuko shouted. "You're lying."

Azula smirked. "Come on, Zuzu, you know it's true. You wouldn't put up such a fuss if you didn't at least _think_ it was possible."

"It's not," Zuko said. "And what are you complaining about me not doing anything for? All you did last night was _sleep._ "

Azula opened her eyes wide in an expression of innocence that was sure to irritate Zuko. " _I_ rested and recovered from being struck with a stiletto-shooter." Or whatever that thing was really called. Azula wasn't about to admit that she didn't know. "Adequate rest is important for maintaining good health and–"

"If _I_ had been shot and slept all day you wouldn't talk about how resting was important for my health." Zuko turned his back to Azula.

"I would _too_ ," Azula said, even though she knew better than to get into an argument with Zuko over something so stupid. " _I'd_ figure out how to get the door open so that we could go home, or at least find something to eat." Now that Azula was fully awake she was ravenously hungry.

"They brought us food." Zuko gestured to a plate filled with beans and rice and some other stuff that Azula didn't recognize. "I saved it for you."

Azula thought it more likely that he hadn't been willing to try and eat with his hands cuffed, but she let him feel generous. It would't hurt anything and they shouldn't waste energy fighting when they should be focusing on escaping.

"Thanks," Azula said. She slid off the bed, no sense in straining her injury by trying something more energetic, picked up the plate. There captors seemed to have forgotten to leave then any utensils, so Azula was forced to eat with her hands.

The food was rather like Cousin Lu Ten had described traditional Earth Kingdom food: flavorful, but lacking any kind of kick. No chili, no cayenne, no peppercorns, not even the milder black ones. It was still filling, and by the time Azula had eaten half of it she was full. "Do you want me to feed you some?" She asked her brother.

Zuko shook his head. "I'm not hungry."

Azula glared at him. "How are you supposed to keep your strength up if you don't eat anything?"

Zuko glared back. "I'll eat when I get hungry," he said, in a tone that suggested he was being stubborn more than anything else. "I'm not going to starve to death before that happens."

"Probably not," Azula conceded, "but you'll get weaker and won't have the strength to escape even if _I_ burned the door down. Especially if they don't bring us any more food."

"Why wouldn't they bring us more food?" Zuko sounded genuinely confused, and for a moment Azula was torn over whether he was faking or he really was _that_ stupid. It had to be the latter. Zuko had never been any good at hiding his emotions and he couldn't have gotten better without Azula noticing, not when she was the prime source of most of them.

"So that we won't have the strength to escape. Because they want to soften us up for questioning. And I'm sure that if they run out of food we'll be the first ones to stop being fed."

Of course, Zuzu had to miss the point. "Why would anyone question _us_. We don't know anything. We're a couple of kids, so they wouldn't even have a reason to _think_ we know anything."

Azula rolled her eyes. "It doesn't matter why they do anything, dum-dum. It only matters that there are plenty of reasons for them to stop feeding us and they could do it any minute."

"Not if they were running out of food," Zuko said. "If that happened they would probably cut our rations first, trying to make the food last longer. And if they wanted to sap our strength they just wouldn't give us _enough_ to eat. And–"

" _It doesn't matter_ ," Azula repeated. "We need to get out of here as quickly as possible, before they can do anything horrible to us. Or do you just want to sit here and hope that they're secretly nice people who are only locking us up for our own good."

"I don't think they are," Zuko said. "Locking us up for our own good. I don't think that they locked us up because of anything to do with us. It was more about them and what they're doing here."

Azula contemplated that for a moment. It almost made sense, but because it was Zuko saying it he had to be as ambiguous as possible. Then she remembered that they were supposed to be leaving, not thinking about their captors perspective. "I think we should try to break the hinges off the door. That should be the weakest part."

"There are people camped right outside our door," Zuko said. He had seen them, when the door had been opened momentarily to shove in the plateful of food and a bucket. "There's no way they won't see us if we try to leave."

"Then we'll wait until they fall asleep," Azula said.

"And if they have someone keeping watch?" Zuko asked. There wasn't an if about it, since there had been someone keeping watch at the door to the upstairs last night, but Azula was sure that they would be able to deal with a single person standing guard. They were a Princess and Prince of the Fire Nation, even if Zuzu was terrible at it.

"We kill them," Azula said. The idea made her ever so slightly nervous, but she reasoned that it was the best possible way to stop the guard from sending in reinforcements.

"I don't think killing someone is that easy," Zuko said. "Even if they aren't a professional solider. There are all those problems with rebellions in the newly subdued colonies and those are mostly made up of people who weren't fighting when the colony was formed."

Trust Zuko to know all about the most boring and useless parts of war. "What does that have to do with anything?" Azula asked. "In case you hadn't noticed, we aren't anywhere near the colonies right now."

Zuko looked rather confused. It seemed that in his twisted brain there was some connection between the colonies and this place that he expected Azula to have seen. "These people aren't professional soldiers either."

"What makes you think that?" Azula asked. They had certainly been very effective, considering that they had been able to capture Azula so easily, and their weapons were the kind of thing that no sane ruler would allow untrained civilians to get their hands on.

"They aren't wearing uniforms for one," Zuko said.

"They could be undercover," Azula said. That would make sense, considering that they were hiding underground and messing around with strange circles.

Zuko shook his head. "I saw their camp when they locked us up in here."

"So did I." Despite her injury, Azula had taken careful note of how it was laid out and where the probably exits were. At least, she thought she had.

"It wasn't properly organized," Zuko said. "There were bedrolls all over the place and a desk with half a dozen piles of documents on it and nothing resembling a command tent. No proper officer would let their troops get away with that."

"It's hardly surprising that they aren't up to Fire Nation standards," Azula said. "Poor organizational skills will only work in our favor, as they're less likely to notice we're missing."

"We could wait until whoever they're hiding from shows up," Zuko said, "and escape in the confusion. That's the best way I can think to avoid getting caught."

Azula almost asked Zuko what made him think they were hiding from anything, but she thought that would be giving him too much credit. Besides, they wouldn't have bothered to set a guard if they weren't afraid of _someone_ attacking them. "Fine," Azula said. "But we're figuring out how to get the door open while we wait."

"Right," Zuko said. He walked over to the door and began to inspect the hinges, probably because Azula had said that they were the weakest point. "Hey! They didn't take my knife. We can use it to cut through the hinges!"

"The knife Uncle Iroh gave you?" If Azula remembered correctly, that thing had been more decorative than functional. "You _sleep_ with that?"

"Yeah." Zuko hopped over to Azula. "It's in my left pocket, if you would get it out for me."

Azula drew the knife and looked it over. Yep, definitely not at all suitable for sawing through metal. If they tried that they'd probably snap the blade before they made it through even one of the hinges. "I don't think that's going to work."

"Why not?"

"Because dinky little Earth Kingdom knives aren't designed to saw through door hinges," Azula said. She paused, allowing herself a moment to pretend to be thinking about the problem. "If only you'd thought to have a file in your pocket when you went to bed last night. Then we wouldn't have any difficulty getting through the hinges."

" _You_ didn't bring a file either," Zuko said. He stomped the three steps over to the door and turned his attention back to the hinges. "I think they're being held together by a pin. Maybe if we pull them out... Azula, come over here and try to take them out."

Azula groaned, but got up and went over to the door. At least this was better than Zuko moping around doing nothing.


	9. Planning

April 16, 1918  
2nd Lieutenant Jean Havoc

Havoc ran his fingers over the blueprints they had of the basement. He was supposed to be analyzing the structure and considering where this group was likely to be hiding, but all he could think was that he _really_ didn't want to have to fight his way through all those twisty little hallways. It would be like fighting through the streets of Ishval, without any chance of deploying a sniper to provide some cover. "I think we should shell the place," Havoc said. He was not being entirely serious, but Hawkeye frowned at him anyway. "That would solve all our problems. Targets neutralized. Crisis averted. And we wouldn't have to get involved in an underground firefight."

"That's not a viable option," Brigadier General Mustang said. "Some of the buildings near the hospital are currently occupied and we can't risk any civilian casualties."

"What if we evacuated the nearby buildings first?" Fuery asked. "The General could go around afterwards and fix anything that was damaged during the shelling and we wouldn't have to go underground." Of all people, _Fuery_ was not someone Havoc would have expected to back him up on this, but perhaps it shouldn't have been such a surprise, since a communications officer would be virtually worthless underground.

Breda shook his head at that. "And warn the– what are these people calling themselves again–"

"The Alchemist's Group to Resist the Usurper's Rule," Hawkeye supplied. It was a bit of a stupid name, since they weren't all alchemists and they weren't doing much in the way of resisting, but stupid names were practically a requirement for insurgent groups so Havoc couldn't fault them too much.

"Thanks– And warn them that we're coming. We could have all the exits from the hospital watched, but there's no guarantee that one of their alchemist's can't tunnel them out," Breda finished.

"Besides," Hawkeye said. "We have orders to bring back Claudia Norton and James Brendel back alive, if possible, and we can't do that if we collapse the building on top of them. Also–" She shot a pointed look at Mustang. "– Brendel has a history of experimenting on human subjects, that's why his State Alchemist's License was revoked. Do we really want to risk killing anyone he might be holding captive?"

"So we're back to our original plan," Mustang said. "We post guards at all the exits, go in, and drag the lot of them out." There was a hint of resignation to his voice, and Havoc was reminded that that whole business on the Promised Day had involved going underground. Whatever had happened there had been bad enough that Hawkeye still refused to talk about it. Havoc hadn't had the courage to try to get the story out of Mustang, but he thought that, whatever it was, it would definitely be enough to make someone wary of underground spaces.

"If we had some way to flush them toward the other exits, that would be ideal," Breda said. He began looking through the load of papers on the table the group was sitting at. "Where did the blueprints end up? I know we had some."

"I've got them," Havoc said. He shoved the blueprints in Breda's direction.

"Thanks." Breda picked the blueprints up and spent half a minute staring at them, probably have as much trouble getting all the little tunnels straight as Havoc had had. Then he laid them flat so that the rest of the group could see what he was talking about. "Okay, there's only the one stairwell, so we're going to have to go down there. Assuming, of course, that the blueprints are still accurate."

"They're accurate," Havoc said, pointing at the date on them. "1913. Only two years before the place was shut down."

"I was thinking that the current inhabitants may have done some remolding," Breda said. Havoc felt rather stupid. They had just been talking about how the alchemists could escape by making tunnels on the spot. _Of course_ they could do anything they wanted to the inside of the building.

"They can't have done too much," Brigadier General Mustang said. "Not if they've got any brains. The load bearing walls have to still be intact and messing with the foundation's probably not a very good idea."

Feeling a bit better, Havoc snatched the blueprints away from Breda. "So how do we tell which walls are load bearing?"

Mustang shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine. Unless it's marked on the map, there's not a good way to tell without looking at them."

"So _they_ know what can be messed with and we can't?" Havoc wasn't trying to complain about it, but his words came out as a whine anyway.

"Not until we're there," Mustang said. "On the plus side, if we couldn't find any records of what walls were load bearing, they almost certainly didn't. And _I_ would personally be reluctant to mess around with interior walls unless I was sure they weren't going to collapse my hideout on top of me."

"These people aren't you, General," Havoc said. "They might not be so careful." He paused, considering the implications of this. "Maybe, if we're lucky, they'll have collapsed a wall on top of themselves and they'll be nothing left down there but bones."

Mustang appeared to think about this for a moment. "I think I'd rather have the fight then all the paperwork from finding them dead. Not to mention that we'd still have to clear them all our of the building." Meaning, they'd have to spend weeks digging through rubble for bodies.

"Leaving all potential paperwork aside," Hawkeye said, a bit more loudly than was probably necessary. "We should get back to the question of how we're going to deploy once we're inside. We don't have any better information than the blueprints and there's no point in wasting time wondering about what our targets may or may not have done to the inside. We can always change the plan later if we have to."

"Right," Mustang said. He shook his head, as though composing himself and then turned to look at the blueprints. "Breda's right, the only way in is through the stairwell. We're going to want to leave some people behind to cut off any escape through it. From there..." He trailed a finger over the blueprints, following the halls. "The question is where they've got the bulk of their operation. There are only about fifty of them, they don't need all the space."

"They still might want a large room for some of their transmutation circles," Hawkeye said. "Those can take up a lot of floor space, depending upon what they're being used for."

The only giant circles Havoc could remember ever seeing were the ones used to make the Philosopher's Stone, and the idea made him shudder. He hoped that wasn't what this group was doing. He wasn't sure how many people a Philosopher's Stone took, but with fifty they probably had some they could spare. Especially if they picked up vagrants.

"The kind of stuff that requires a large circle, is not the kind of stuff that smart people do when they're on the run from the government," Mustang said. "But then again, desperation drives all sorts of stupid decisions... If they're using any of the rooms for large-scale experiments, it would be this one." He pointed to one of the largest rooms in the basement. "It's on the far end of the building from the stairs and it should have both gas and running water."

"Probably not anymore," Havoc said. "The utility company would have turned those off first thing when the place was shut down." That was only good policy, since the last thing the company needed was for a band of hobos to move in and start mooching off them. Or a band of insurgents. "They probably don't have electricity either."

"So we all ought to be wearing headlamps," Breda said. "Wonderful." Havoc found himself agreeing, the only way to make an underground firefight worse was to have it in the dark.

"Actually, there might be electricity in some parts of the building," Fuery said. "We got a tip that the hospital might be occupied when someone was seen hauling a generator in."

"You're welcome to rely on that if you like," Havoc said. " _I'll_ wear a headlamp, thanks." Better safe than sorry.

"So we enter through the staircase," Breda said. "We take this route through the halls–" He traced one out on the blueprints, turning immediately after exiting the staircase and circling around the hospital to approach the likely room from the other side. "If the room is empty–"

"Then we probably won't make it there without running into someone," Mustang finished. "If, by some miracle, we make it to that point undetected then we continue down to the far corner and start an organized sweep through the building. Hall by hall, checking every door that we come across. Same once we've subdued anyone who might be working in that room. Any questions, comments, or concerns?"

"Any preference as to what squads we bring?" Hawkeye asked. Figured, she was the one in charge of coordinating all that and there was no way they were going to fit the entire brigade in that hospital basement.

"I want all of you coming, along with another platoon. I don't care which one," Mustang said. He looked the group over, his eyes lingering on Hawkeye a little longer than the rest. Or at least Havoc thought they had. No one else seemed to notice.

"I'm not sure how much use I'll be underground," Fuery said. "We might be able to get walkie-talkies working, but there's no way a radio is going to be able to report anything back to headquarters."

"I want you standing guard topside with a squad of your own," Mustang said. "That way there's someone on hand who can call for reinforcements if necessary."

Fuery nodded. Hawkeye, on the other hand, had pursed her lips into an expression of displeasure. "Are you planning on leading this mission personally, sir?"

"I think it would be for the best," Mustang said. He tried to sound completely nonchalant, but there was tension in his voice, tension that didn't belong there when he was talking to Hawkeye. "I was specifically given this assignment because as a State Alchemist I would best suited to deal with former State Alchemists who had defected."

"You could wait until after we'd cleared the area and captured who we could, sir." Hwakeye's voice was polite, even a bit deferential, but there was an edge to it that suggested she was more upset about this then she let on. "I read the orders from Fuhrer Grumman. This mission isn't over when we've captured the rogues. You're supposed to determine what they've been researching since they holed up down there."

"This way I'll be on hand the moment we recover their notes," Mustang said. "As well as being present to see any combat applications of said research. There is no reason for me to stay behind." He looked the group over, silently daring anyone else to say that he should stay out of the fight.

 _Havoc_ wasn't going to say anything, no matter how true it might be. People _died_ in combat, and while Mustang still thought of himself as a fighter he had reached the rank where he was supposed to be directing troops rather than charging into battle. Experienced commanders were difficult to replace.

"Right then," Mustang said. "I'll see you all at 0500 hours tomorrow morning. Dismissed."


	10. Escaping

11th Day, Peach Moon, Year of the Tiger  
Prince Zuko

The hinges had proven too difficult to move, so they had started working on the door. Or Azula had started working on the door because the guard bringing dinner had acted the same way as the one bringing breakfast had: cracked open the door, shoved a plate of food in, and hurried off without checking to see if either Zuko or Azula needed anything.

Zuko was almost tempted to ask Azula to try and saw his handcuffs off. Quite aside from being unable to do anything for himself, they were starting to chaff. He hadn't complained about it, knowing that Azula would tease him for being a baby if he did, but he was afraid they might rub his skin off if he kept them on for much longer.

"You should stop trying to get your hands out like that," Azula said. "It's not going to work and you're going to make it worse."

Zuko spun around, certain that Azula was standing right behind him and watching his struggles without doing anything to help. But she was still working on the door, diligently using Zuko's knife to hack out a circle around the doorknob. "What makes you think I'm trying to get out of them?"

"Please." Zuko could not see his sister's face, but he suspected she was rolling her eyes. "I can hear all that clanking you're making. It's driving me mad."

"It's not _that_ loud," Zuko said. It was barely noticeable to him, and he was the one right on top of it.

"It's loud enough," Azula said. "And if you weren't so caught up in trying to break out through brute strength, you would have thought to pick the lock."

"With what? You've got the only knife." And, even if Zuko had had his knife, it wasn't as though he had ever tried to pick a lock before. It couldn't be _that_ easy, because people went to the bother of making locks in the first place.

"Dum-dum, you don't pick locks with knives. You use a hairpin or a piece of wire or something like that." Where she had learned that was anyone's guess, unless she hadn't learned it at all and was only making it up so that Zuko would look stupid when he tried to jam a hairpin into the locking mechanism of the handcuffs.

Zuko took a deep breath, forcing himself to stay calm. Azula wouldn't do something like that, not when there was no one else around so see Zuko make a fool of himself. She would want him free so that he could help her escape. "Do you have any hairpins in your topknot?"

"Of course not," Azula said. There was irritation in her voice, like Zuko should know how she did her hair. "If I had hairpins, they wouldn't have stayed in all this time. Don't you know anything about hair?"

"Of course not," Zuko said, mimicking his sister's tone as best he could. "I'm a prince, why would I know anything about how to put up hair?"

"You need to be able to take care of yourself," Azula said. "So that when you're leading troops through the Earth Kingdom you don't need to rely on anyone else to make yourself presentable." For the first time, Zuko noticed that Azula had fixed her topknot up since they had been captured. It had to have been last night, when she had made him lie down and try to sleep.

"When I'm leading troops through the Earth Kingdom, I think my appearance will– what was that noise?" Zuko cocked his head, hoping that he could get a pin on where it was coming from. It wasn't directly above them, but he thought it might be from somewhere on the upper floor– or perhaps it was the stairwell coming up from the basement.

"What noise?" Azula asked. She stopped her work and pocketed Zuko's knife, assuming one of the firebending stances that Zuko had only just started to learn, the one that didn't look as though the user was ready to start hurling fire.

"It's like when you were hit with the," Zuko paused, trying to remember what Azula had called the thing, "stiletto-shooter."

Someone in the camp outside the room someone shouted. It was in whatever strange language these people spoke, so Zuko didn't know what it was, but it sounded urgent. From the sound of things the entire camp jumped to their feet and began to run towards where the noise had been. "I think we're under attack," Zuko said.

Azula scowled at the door, eyeing the notches cut around the doorknob. "It's going to take _hours_ to cut through the rest of this," she said. "So much for escaping while they're distracted."

"Not necessarily," Zuko said. Azula had weakened the door quite a bit. If they applied enough pressure to it, it might break. "Get out of the way."

Azula glared at him. "Don't charge the door, Dum-dum."

"I'm not going to charge the door," Zuko said, even though that was what he had been planning to do a moment prior. "I'm going to kick it." That would be better than punching it.

"You might want to wait a minute for all their people to leave," Azula said, still not moving out from in front of the door.

Zuko shook his head. "We need to leave during the confusion," he said. "That way we won't get caught by whoever they leave behind to guard camp."

"Guard camp? You said their operation was sloppy. Why would they leave guards behind at camp when they're so terrified of whoever's attacking them." Zuko listened to the sounds of the camp breaking up and troops being deployed. Not knowing exactly what was being said made it difficult to tell what was going on, but Azula was right. It sounded frightened and haphazard and not at all professional.

"Fine," Zuko said. "We wait." He slumped down on the bed, waiting until the noise outside died down.

When the last few footsteps were fading away, Azula turned to the door and kicked it, using one of the strikes from firebending training. The door did not budge. Zuko couldn't see Azula's face from where he was standing, but her posture suggested that she was livid.

"You're too short," Zuko said, knowing that blaming her height was the best way to make her stop without getting her upset. Azula got touchy whenever _anyone_ suggested she hadn't done something well enough. "You can't reach up high enough to hit it where it's already weak. Let me try."

Azula shuffled out from in front of the door, still glowering. Zuko ignored her, focusing on the door and how to go about breaking a hole in it. It was obvious where he should hit it, in the notches Azula had carved around the knob, but what move to use. One of the heel strikes would be best, since they concentrated the most force in one place, but Zuko knew several of those...

"If you're going to kick the door, kick the door," Azula said. "Otherwise, get out of the way so that I can kick the door. You're wasting time."

"Sorry," Zuko said. He took a step back and kicked the door as hard as he could.

The door cracked, but did not break.

Zuko kicked it again, causing the door to come flying open. For half a second he was disoriented. Two days had made the camp look far more different than it should have.

"Well," Azula demanded. "Which way is out? You were awake, you should know."

"We don't want to leave just yet," Zuko said. "We should raid their supplies first. That way we'll have food." He began scanning the halls, looking for anything that might be useful.

"How do you plan on carrying it?" Azula asked. "You don't have your hands free to carry stuff, and carrying anything with slow us down– and make it harder for me to fight, if we run into trouble."

"We're not going to be able to fight our way out of this," Zuko said. "Remember what happened when we tried that earlier?"

"You mean, when _I_ tried that. All you did was surrender." Azula's lip curled up and her eyes narrowed into an expression of distaste, as though she had never tapped out of a fight.

"I cut my losses," Zuko said. It sounded better that way, like it was part of a strategy instead of a desperate attempt not to get shot. "Which one of us got stabbed?"

"And which one of us is locked up in handcuffs?" Azula asked. "It was worth getting _shot_ with the stiletto-shooter to be able to use my arms. And I'm all better now, so it's not like I really lost anything." No matter what she said, Azula did not look all better. She looked like she had just started recovering from a nasty cold and was anxious to be up and about.

"For a little bit there, I thought you were going to die," Zuko said. He wasn't sure how the thought Azula would react to that. Probably laugh at him for being so stupid as to think she could die.

"What, were you afraid that you'd be left here all alone?" Azula asked. "Didn't think you could take the Earth Kingdomers yourself?"

"It doesn't matter," Zuko said. "We should get out of here before our captors deal with whoever attacked them. Come on." He headed off down the hallway in the direction he thought the staircase was.

A little while latter it became obvious that Zuko had no idea where the staircase was. Figuring that whatever fighting is going on is happening at the stairwell, he starts following the noise.

"I think we should stop for a bit," Azula said. "At least until the fighting stops. We don't want to get shot by accident."

Zuko didn't want to get shot either, but he wasn't going to stop just because Azula thought they should. "It'll be easiest to sneak past when they're distracted, right? Once the fighting's over they'll just set a guard and we'll be caught the same way we were last time. We should keep going, at least until we can see people."

A gout of fire came around the corner, hot enough to make Zuko's skin redden. If his hands had been loose, he would have tried to firebend it away from him, but as it was he considered himself lucky he hadn't been burned too badly.

"Looks like we stop here," Azula said, sitting down right where she was standing. "You might want to back up, Zuzu, so that you don't get fried again."

Zuko shook his head. "How about you get in front and firebend anymore attacks away from us," he said. "That way we can get close enough to see what's going on and who's side the firebender is on."

"Firebender?" Azula repeated. "That was way too big to be a firebender. It was probably a gas explosion of some kind. We went over those in school when we were talking about energy sources."

"I know," Zuko said. " _I_ learned about that in school too. Gas was deemed dangerous and unreliable and we decided to stick to coal instead. Less risk of poisoning people." From what he had seen of their captors, Zuko thought it likely that they were stupid enough to play around with gas, but they shouldn't have a good way to get any. "If it was a gas explosion, then is should have used up all the gas, so there won't be another fireball." He starting walking again.

There was the rustle of clothing as Azula scrambled up to follow him. "There _shouldn't_ be another fireball. That doesn't mean there _won't_ be one. And if there is one, you'll get burned. Badly. You aren't any good at firebending without your arms."

"Then you should get in front where you can firebend an explosion away from us." Zuko didn't really think she would do that, not when she wanted to stay here, but it was worth a shot. For once, he might be able to out-stubborn her.

"I have a better idea." Azula's footsteps were hard and fast, like she was jogging to get ahead of Zuko. He started walking faster, to make it harder for her to catch up. "We stop at the corner, and I'll take the lead."

Zuko sprinted the last few steps to the corner, stopped and peered around it. If there was something nasty up ahead he could always stop and let Azula deal with it. She was the one with her arms free, and the better firebender. She could take whatever it was. "I was right. There is a firebender."

"Let me see." Azula shoved Zuko, pushing him into the wall as she looked around the corner from behind him. "What firebender? I don't see one."

"He's the short one with dark hair on the Water Tribe team." At least that was Zuko's guess, he had missed the start of the last firebending attack, but it had seemed to point from that man to a group of the people in Earth Kingdom colors. "The people in blue, I mean." They probably weren't Water Tribe any more than the other people were Earth Kingdom.

"The one with all the rank insignias?" Azula asked.

"Yeah," Zuko said. He wasn't sure what the insignias meant, but he figured that having lots of them meant that someone was important. " I think he's the one in charge."

"He does seem to be barking orders the most," Azula said. Zuko turned so that he could see the expression on her face out of the corner of his eye. She looked far happier than she had moments before, as though one of the enemy commanders being a firebender made some kind of difference.

"He's not Fire Nation," Zuko said, hoping to get his sister back to reality before she thought up any stupid plans involving this guy taking them home. "He probably doesn't speak our language, and there's no way he knows how to get us home."

"That's obvious, Zuzu," Azula said. She snuggled into him a little bit, like she was nervous and wanted comfort. Or maybe she was just trying to get a better look. With Azula it was hard to tell sometimes. "He's not dressed properly and he's not using proper firebending forms."

"How do you know that?" Zuko asked. This firebender, wherever he had learned from, had gotten good enough at it that he could firebend without moving himself at all. "He's only using his hands."

"Exactly," Azula said. "If there were any firebending moves that only used your hands, and used them as little as he's doing right now, don't you think we would have heard of them before?"

Whether the forms were proper or not, that man was making a lot of flame. "I wonder why he hasn't done any big fireblasts like the first one we saw?" Zuko mused aloud. "He could have gotten rid of the people attacking him so much faster that way." Instead he and his soldiers, they were wearing uniforms so they probably were professionals, were firing stiletto-shooters at each other.

"He's probably trying to conserve his energy," Azula said. "It must be awfully tiring to make great big fireblasts like that."

"Right," Zuko said. It had to be exhausting to make fire the way this man was. Zuko wouldn't be at all surprised if he collapsed at the end of the battle. "So do we wait until the fighting's stopped and get him to help us or do we do this on our own?"

"We get him to help us, of course," Azula said. "He's a firebender so he can't be too bad. And he's in charge." Meaning, that if he decided to take proper care of Zuko and Azula, no one else could get away with locking them up again.

"But how do we get him to help us?" Zuko asked. They couldn't simply ask him– unless he had the good fortune to speak their language– and it wasn't like military leaders were in the business of helping strange children found lurking around their enemy's lair.

Azula snorted and for half a second Zuko thought she was going to make some kind of smart comment about his inability to make friends. "Easy. We're little and cute. All we have to do is look frightened and he'll be eager to help. You're even handcuffed. That should make up some for how old you are."

"I'm not sure that's going to work on him," Zuko said. "He's a general, not Mom."

"Dum-dum, Uncle Iroh's a general and this would work perfectly on him." It probably would, Zuko couldn't see Uncle doing anything but making sure a couple of children lost near his camp were taken care of. "And we're both firebenders, so he's bound to like us."

"You can impress him with your firebending." Zuko knew that he wasn't good enough to impress anyone, and this firebender was obviously very skilled. "That way he won't delegate taking care of us to his subordinates." Which was what Uncle Iroh would probably do.

"Who cares if his subordinates are the ones taking care of us as long as someone is?" Azula said. Her voice projected confidence, but Zuko could hear worry underneath it. Azula had always been independent and eager to take care of herself, no matter what Mom said, so there had to be some kind of other reason for her to want someone to take care of her.

Or she was just frightened by how little control she had now that she and Zuko were on their own and wanted someone else to do all the heavy lifting. That sounded more like Azula. "His subordinates probably aren't firebenders."

"Of course not, you don't see any of them firebending, do you?" Azula said, right as a particularly large gout of flame knocked over one of the last defenders. "Now, we should wait until the fighting stops and then run up to the group. Make lots of noise, we don't want to startle them and have them shoot us."

"Shouldn't noise startle them more?" Zuko asked. After all, loud noise could be caused by all sorts of things, many of them unpleasant, while the sight of two kids walking around could only be caused by a pair of kids.

"Not if we give them time to hear us coming." Azula began to stomp in place. Neither the firebender nor his subordinates seemed to notice, but they had a couple of people shooting at them from around the next corner to worry about. "Then they'll be waiting for us."

That didn't sound entirely comforting, considering that waiting could mean 'waiting to shoot them as soon as they emerged', but professional soldiers wouldn't shoot a couple of kids. "You should wait until the fighting's over," Zuko said. "That way they'll be able to hear you." And there wasn't any risk of being shot by the bad guys.

"Duh. I'm not stupid, Zuzu," Azula said. "We're going to have to time this perfectly, because the firebender isn't going to stick around long after he wins."

Zuko didn't think it was going to be that difficult, but he didn't interrupt Azula's diatribe. He was too busy watching the fighting, preparing himself for when it stopped.


	11. Meeting

April 17, 1918  
Brigadier General Roy Mustang

They had only just finished moping up what Mustang hoped was the last group of insurgents when he heard the noise. A loud rhythmic tapping, like the footsteps of something very large. Gluttony had sounded something like that when he had been chasing them through the forest.

Mustang turned towards the sound, fully prepared to fry whatever was making it. Multiple times, if necessary. Around him, his squad did the same. Anything that stepped out of the hallway would be met with a hail of bullets.

If it was a homunculus, and it _wasn't_ because Pride was the only one sort-of left and he was never that heavy, it still might take most of the squad out before Mustang could put it down. Most of the group left, the ones that hadn't been sent back with the prisoners, had been recruited after the Promised Day. They wouldn't have any idea how to deal with a creature that could take hundreds of bullets and keep going. If it wouldn't have been disastrous for moral Mustang would have been tempted to send most of the group on ahead. He and Hawkeye had taken homunuculi before, they would be able to manage again.

When a pair of children, both stomping their feet as though they were trying to dent the floor, stepped out from the hallway, Mustang was relived. And the tiniest bit disappointed, although he would eat his gloves before he would admit it. It had been so long since he'd had a proper fight.

There were two of them, a boy of eight or nine and a girl a couple of years younger. They were both dark-haired and wearing rumpled clothes. Nice clothes too, although not cut anything like normal Amestrian children's clothing. Neither were they the kind of minimalist covering that Mustang would expect a pair of lab rats to be dressed in. They had to be whatever the children had been wearing when they first came here, then. He filed the idea away for later consideration.

"What are a couple of kids doing here?" Havoc asked. He looked around at the rest of the group, seeming to realize how stupid his question was. "They don't _look_ like they've been experimented on."

"The boy's hands are tied," Hawkeye reported. "That's not something people do to their own children. And I'm sure the Alchemist's Group would have mentioned it if they had taken any hostages." She took a few steps towards the group, crouching down so that she would appear less threatening.

The boy smiled at her, but the girl didn't appear to be reassured. She hissed at Hawkeye and shied away from her, stepping sideways rather than backing up. She probably didn't want to be separated from the boy, they might even have been siblings from the way the two of them looked.

"Don't be shy," Hawkeye said. "We're here to help. What are your names?"

The boy's smile faltered and said something unintelligible. Mustang thought, going off on intonation and such, that it might have been Xingese, but he didn't actually speak Xingese, so he couldn't be sure. "Privates Gepard and Abrams, take the kids to a military hospital. They ought to be checked out by a doctor. We can figure out who they are and how they got here after this place is cleared."

"Yes, sir," the two said. Private Abrams, the smaller of the two and the less likely to appear threatening, scooped up the little girl and turned to carry her down the hall. Meanwhile, Private Gepard started examining the boy's hands.

"He's been handcuffed," Gepard said, anger leaking through even though Mustang could tell that she was trying to sound calm. "For a couple of days, by the look of it. Here, kiddo. Let's get those nasty things off of you."

Confident that the children were being dealt with, Mustang started off down the hall, the remainder of his squad following behind him.

"Ouch! She _burned_ me!" Abrams shouted. There was a dull thud, indicating that he had probably dropped the child. Mustang turned, just enough to see that Abrams wasn't seriously injured, and noticed that the boy had a familiar expression on his face. It was Hawkeye's 'I left you alone for five minutes and now look what you've done' expression.

Good. He could be expected to help control the girl. At least, to try to help control her, because his expression was having decidedly less effect than Hawkeye's usually did.

"She burned me," Abrams repeated. He was staring at his arm in shock. "Just with her hand. There's something wrong with these kids, General."

Right, if even one of the kids was going to put up a fuss, especially if Brendel had been trying to make her into some kind of super-solider who didn't need ammunition, then it wasn't a good idea to leave a couple of privates in charge of them.

The girl looked from Abrams to Mustang and then to the boy, the look on her face remarkably similar to Maes's when he had been gauging the effectiveness of a tactic he had just thought up. It was an expression that usually boded ill for whomever had just found themselves on the opposing side.

Mustang turned around fully, preparing himself to put out a fire if the little girl decided to start one. It was one of the lesser known of the Flame Alchemist's skills, but it was shaping up to be the most useful in this post-Promised Day no-more-wars world they were making.

The little girl took off down the hallway in Mustang's direction, much to his surprise. Little children usually ran _away_ from scary people. He had the barest second to wonder what on earth had made the girl think that attacking a dozen armed soldiers on her own was a good idea before the girl plowed into him, wrapping her arms around his legs the way Elysia Hughes did sometimes when she was really excited.

"How go I get her off me?" Mustang was vaguely aware that he didn't sound nearly as dignified as a Brigadier General should, but didn't really care. He couldn't very well lead a combat mission while dragging around a six year-old.

"Usually I would talk to her. Explain that everything is fine and she needs to let go," Gepard said, "but I'm not sure she understands anything we're saying."

"Wonderful," Mustang said. He took hold of one of the girl's hands and started prying her fingers off his trousers. She sniffed and let out the most pathetic, obviously faked wail that Mustang had ever had the misfortune to hear.

Unfortunately, the only one else who seemed to have the ability to tell fake crying from real crying was the boy. He was smiling, probably pleased at how beautifully his little sister was pulling off the manipulative brat act. Hawkeye was glaring at Mustang like he was making the girl cry on purpose and the rest of the squad was obviously displeased, if attempting to hide it.

Mustang got the girl's right hand loose, only for her to promptly latch onto his jacket. This was taking far too long. "Abrams, get over here and be ready to grab her."

Abrams looked from his commanding officer to the girl and gulped. Right, Mustang should have known better than to expect even a good solider to happily waltz over to someone who had just burned them. "On second thought, Breda, you come get the girl. Abrams, how bad is that burn?"

"Not bad, sir," Abrams said. He held his hand up to his face, examining it as though he wasn't actually sure how bad it was. "First degree, maybe second, but it hasn't started to blister." Which wasn't a guarantee that it wouldn't, since it could take blisters hours to form, but that suggested it wasn't too bad. The girl shouldn't be able to hurt anyone _that_ much. Mustang didn't think she was skilled enough to hide her full strength under stress yet. It took a lot of practice to pull punches.

Breda walked over and held out his arms to take the girl. He smiled at her, but it was a nervous smile, the kind he gave when he was forced to share personal space with Black Hayate, and it only earned him a glare from the girl.

On the other hand, the girl relaxed a bit, probably not enough for Breda to see, but enough for Mustang to feel, so it might just be that she liked Breda afraid of her and wanted to make sure he stayed that way.

And if she had been experimented on and given some kind of alchemical power, Mustang had no doubt that he would be the one who had to deal with later. At least the boy looked like he wasn't going to cause trouble.

Much trouble, Mustang amended, as the boy perked up and began eyeing something behind Mustang, almost as though he was trying to make Mustang think that there was something interesting back there. It might have worked too, if Mustang hadn't been surrounded by a bunch of people who would have noticed anyone trying to sneak up behind him.

That was when he heard the footsteps, still quiet but fast and getting louder every second. Mustang found himself holding back a curse. He _knew_ better than to get bogged down in conversation in the middle of an area that hadn't been cleared yet. "Form up. We've got incoming."

The girl let go of Mustang, dropping to the ground and scampering over to her brother before he had even finished speaking. Good. This was going to be a lot easier if Mustang didn't have to worry about keeping her out of the line of fire.

From there, it was only a couple of agonizing seconds before the first of the enemy rounded the corner and it was safe to open fire. Mustang had only once, very early in Ishval, made the mistake of burning a presumed enemy that he couldn't see.

Snap. Three people were down, covered in second degree burns.

Boom. Several more dropped, a couple of them from Mustang's squad, taken out of commission by bullets. For a given value of commission, because a couple of them looked to still be trying to shoot from the ground. No matter, another snap of Mustang's gloves and they were in far to much pain to worry about fighting.

Rat-a-tat-tat. That was a machine gun, coming from what had been the back of the group because these people were idiots. Mustang dropped to the floor, everyone around him either doing the same or trying to melt into the walls.

Snap. Whoever had been firing the machine gun was out of the picture. Unfortunately, someone else took over and there was barely a pause in the bullets. It was too bad that the military was trying to improve their image by keeping as many of these bastards alive for trial, it seriously limited Mustang's usefulness.

Bam. The machine gun was unmanned again, courtesy of Hawkeye, and this time no one stepped forward to keep firing it. From the sound of things there were still a couple of enemies left, all running away. It wouldn't do them any good. Mustang's squad was already in pursuit, and there were people guarding the stairs.

Krakaklam. There was a flash of light from around the corner, bright even for a transmutation. A rebound, probably. Most likely one of the enemy combatants had tried to use a transmutation circle that had already been drawn by Norton or Brendel, not understanding that you needed to know more than simply what a circle was supposed to do in order to use it.

Mustang rounded the corner faster than was probably wise, eager to see what the insurgents had been up to. This next room, he remembered, was the big one that he had singled out as the best place for any large-scale experiments.

And large-scale it was. An enormous transmutation circle, some fifteen feet in diameter, covered much of the floor. It was somewhat obscured by four insurgents, with varying injuries, but Mustang could make out interlocking triangles at the at the center of it, surrounded by what had to be a nonagram. If there was any writing or other symbols, Mustang couldn't see them.

That would make it trickier to decipher what the circle had been intended to do, especially since Mustang had no idea what nonagrams were used for. He was sure they had been mentioned, once, when he was first learning alchemy, but that was years ago and Mustang had always been a bit of a specialist.

The men (or women, the effects of the rebound made it hard to tell) were in no state for questioning. Norton and Brendel would probably be able to explain it, but Mustang doubted they would be willing to. It might be best to call the Elric brothers in. They had a much wider knowledge of alchemy than Mustang did and a lot more practice doing research.

But first, Mustang would see what he could dig up on his own.


	12. Baiting

11th Day, Peach Moon, Year of the Tiger  
Princess Azula

Things were not going at all the way they were supposed to. The firebender, the one who was supposed to be looking after Azula and Zuko, had dumped them on his soldiers as though they were some sort of nuisance instead of the Prince and Princess of the Fire Nation.

A tiny voice inside Azula's head whispered that the firebender didn't know that, and besides he was needed in battle and Zuko and Azula were still young enough that they weren't allowed to fight, but Azula ignored it. Listening to voices in your head was a sure sign of craziness, and the voice sounded far too much like Mother anyway.

Zuko was taking all of this much more placidly than Azula wanted. He was practically consorting with the enemy, allowing himself to be dragged around and fussed over the way he had. One of the nurses had even given him some kind of treat, a purple rock sugar on a stick.

Zuko thrust the stick in Azula's face. "It's tasty. Do you want to try it?" He looked at her with sad eyes, as though he thought she was actually upset over something as stupid as a lump of sugar.

"No," Azula said. She turned around, trying to convey how deeply disappointed she was with her brother in her posture.

Unfortunately, Zuko wasn't quite smart enough to figure out Azula's very clear body language. "I'm sorry she didn't give you one. Maybe if you don't spit at her the next time she tries to check you for injuries, she'll give you one then."

"I don't want a stupid sugar stick," Azula said. "It's a distraction, intended to keep us from wondering where the firebender went." Probably not an intentional distraction, she doubted these people thought enough of a couple of children to bother with anything like that, but a distraction nevertheless.

"You're thinking about this too much," Zuko said. "The firebender is going to come back sometime, when all the fighting is done. He had his men take care of us, didn't he?"

"That doesn't mean that he's going to come anywhere near us ever again," Azula said. He hadn't looked very interested in them, not until Azula had burned the solider who had attacked her and tried to ingratiate herself with the firebender by acting cute.

"He's going to have to see us again," Zuko said. "He still has to decide what to do with us permanently, doesn't he?" Zuko's mouth twisted a bit, the way it did when he was thinking hard, and Azula hoped that he would finally figure out the obvious. "I suppose he doesn't have to see us to do that."

"Exactly," Azula hissed. "He's abandoned us and all you can think about is that stupid sugar stick." Azula spun around and tore the candy out of Zuko's hands, throwing it to the ground. One of the nurses nearby gasped, but none of them did anything.

 _They_ were smart enough to see that Azula was worth being frightened of. That mollified her a little. Finally, someone was giving her the respect she deserved.

"That wasn't very nice," Zuko said, after about half a second thinking. Azula couldn't help but wish he had been a bit stupider and attacked her. A fight would blow off some steam and give her a chance to reassert her superiority. "Mom'll be mad when I tell her what a brat you're being."

Azula stomped on the sugar stick, just to make sure that Zuko wouldn't wash it off and keep sucking on it. That was what Mom would want him to do, and Zuko _always_ did what Mom wanted him to. It was positively sickening. "Mom's not here."

"We're going to get back to her," Zuko said. He clenched his hands into fists. Good, he was actually getting angry. "I'll tell her then, and you'll be in so much trouble."

"No I won't," Azula said. She shifted her weight ever so slightly, so that when Zuko came at her swinging she could step aside and trip him. "Getting back to Mom means getting back to _Dad_ too, Dum-dum. He won't be mad at me. He'll be mad at you for being such a dum-dum who wastes time on stupid candies."

Zuko lunged at her, exactly the way Azula knew he would, but before he could reach her he was lifted in the air from someone behind him.

It was the firebender. Azula bit her lip, angry that she hadn't noticed him sneaking up on them. Still, she tried her best not to let it show. She couldn't have some enemy general, he might have been a firebender but he wasn't Fire Nation and that automatically made him the enemy, know that he had gotten the better of her.

The firebender said something to the nurses. He sounded none too pleased.

The nurses didn't sound pleased either, but from the way they were looking at Zuko they were making excuses for him, saying that Azula had baited him, which was true but Zuko was _ten_. He shouldn't be so easy to rile up.

Azula wanted to light something on fire. Preferably something attached to Zuko, so that she could watch him jump, but she was _better_ than Zuko and that meant she had to control her temper. She still stomped her foot, just hard enough to get the firebender to look at her.

That was deliberate and controlled and not at all like losing her temper.

When she was sure that the firebender was paying her the proper attention, Azula lit a fire in her palm, holding it up in a way that she hoped was threatening.

"Good idea," Zuko said, in an annoyingly chipper voice that made Azula think he was only trying to butter her up so that she didn't hurt him. "If he sees that we're firebenders, maybe he'll want to look after us more."

Azula scowled at him, even as Zuko held out his and and made his own little flame. "Dum-dum, that's not what I made fire for."

"Then what did you make it for?" Zuko asked. He looked from Azula to the firebender, who had a Mom expression on his face. The 'what did Azula do know one' that Azula had always hated. "You can't think that you can take him in a fight."

His flame was rising and falling with his breathing, the way it would if Zuko were meditating. That irked Azula, even though she told herself that it was simply force of habit because Zuko still spent most of his firebending training working on meditating properly.

Azula began tossing her fire from palm to palm, fixing her expression into the wicked little smile that creeped most people out.

The firebender did not look disturbed, just extremely annoyed. Azula resisted the urge to scowl. She must be loosing her touch.

Her only consolation was that Zuko had created another flame and was attempting to juggle them. There was no way he would be able to do that for more than a couple of seconds without screwing up, and probably lighting himself on fire in the process.

Sure enough, Zuko flubbed one of his catches, landing the fireball on his sleeve instead of his hand. It was still salvageable, but Zuko was stupid enough to panic. Emotions _fed_ flames, that was why you had to control them. Zuko was going to get a scar out of this, if he couldn't shape up soon.

The fires went out. All of them, even the flame that Azula had been playing with. She looked up at the firebender, sure that he had done this. It wouldn't have been hard, Azula could put out other people's fires most of time, if they weren't paying attention.

And Azula, loath as she was to admit it, had allowed herself to be distracted by Zuko's incompetence. She was going to have to work on that. As entertaining as it was to watch Zuko fail, she was in enemy hands and had to be on alert at all times.

She held out her hand and created another flame, just to show the enemy firebender that _she_ was in control here.

He put it out an instant later, despite all of Azula's concentration.

She gritted her teeth, dug a little deeper into her chi, and produced another flame.

He put that one out to. She kept going, making a new flame every time he put one out, managing to do it faster and faster until it looked as though the flame in her hand was flickering rather than going out.

She kept it up for quite some time (two minutes or ten minutes or an hour, she was too exhausted to tell) until the firebender finally gave up on stopping her.

He looked more exasperated than defeated, but Azula smiled anyway.


	13. Taking Orders

April 17, 1918  
Brigadier General Roy Mustang

It wasn't enough that his investigation into rouge alchemists had to turn up a couple of kids being experimented on, they had to be pyros as well. At this rate, he was going to be too busy trying to put out fires to complete his paperwork, let alone investigate new transmutation circles.

He was going to have to call Fullmetal over and foist the transmutation circles off on to him and his brother. Or he could foist the girl off. It would serve Fullmetal right to have to deal with that brat, considering the way he had behaved when Mustang had been his commanding officer.

The idea of Fullmetal attempting to deal with a kid as obnoxious as him was a pleasant one, and Mustang found himself smiling slightly at the idea.

The girl scowled back.

It was a bit juvenile, but Mustang found himself smiling even wider. It was nice to know that sometimes he could get the upper hand against irritating little brats like Fullmetal and this girl.

"Brigadier General Mustang," Hawkeye said. She was standing just inside the room. Fuery and Havoc were standing behind her and Mustang was a bit put out that he hadn't noticed any of them enter the room.. "There's been a development about the children."

"Do you know who they belong to yet?" Mustang asked. It wouldn't make much of a difference if they were going to run around lighting things on fire, although Mustang didn't think they were stupid enough to do it on purpose. The girl was only lighting fires as a way to be as obnoxious as possible, he was sure of that. She would stop as soon as no one was putting them out.

"No." Hawkeye shot Havoc one of her behave yourself or else looks, the nasty one that she saved for special occasions. He looked to have been laughing recently. That didn't bode well.

"There's been some discussion about what should be done with them. They aren't injured enough to justify hospitalizing them." Hawkeye looked over at the nurses, both of whom smiled back at her, looking rather relieved. Mustang couldn't blame them.

The children, more specifically the girl, were likely to be absolute terrors to deal with. Not to mention that the nurses had jobs they were supposed to be doing instead of babysitting a couple of kids. Which brought back the question of who was going to take care of them.

The hospital was out. And Grumman wouldn't want to risk his popularity by locking up poor innocent children as scientific experiments. One of the downsides to this freer world was that it was harder to hide things from the press. Soon enough, the entire country would know that the Alchemist's Group had been experimenting on children.

The other benefit to that was it made the insurgents look bad. Ideally, they would parade around the poor, scared, little kids a bit, not enough to make it look like the government was exploiting their pain or anything like that, just enough to put a face to the horrible things the insurgents had done, but Mustang doubted that the girl would be up for that. She'd probably have the reporters fleeing in terror from her.

"But there's been some concern that they wouldn't be properly cared for in an orphanage," Hawkeye continued. Mustang could see why, with the way they kept making fires. "Someone suggested that, as an alchemist who specializes in manipulating flames..."

Mustang had an idea where this might be going, but he hoped very much that he was wrong. "They didn't," he said.

"They _did_ ," Havoc said, with an entirely unwarranted amount of glee.

"And as someone who has prior experience working with children," Hawkeye continued, as calmly as though she had never been interrupted, "that you might be able to take care of them for a couple of weeks. Just until we find their parents, of course."

Assuming that their parents weren't some of the people in the group that had been experimenting on them. That would make a disturbing amount of sense. Children are small, lacking in stamina, and usually have a great desire to please others, especially their parents. It wouldn't be hard for Mommy or Daddy to convince Junior to sit still and let the nice alchemists perform whatever transmutations had created spontaneous combustion.

Not that the girl seemed especially eager to please anyone. Or maybe she just hated Mustang in particular.

"I'm not qualified to raise a child," Mustang said. He knew it wouldn't do any good, because Hawkeye didn't have any control over this and Central hadn't asked for his opinion, but objecting made him feel a bit better.

"Fuhrer Grumman disagrees," Hawkeye said. "And he says that you're not to try and hand them over to someone else."

"He knows about this already?" Mustang knew that they were reporting directly to Central for this, but he had thought it would take a few hours, at least, for the details to get there. Add in a couple of days to make a decision and Mustang had expected to have at least until Tuesday morning to act without the Fuhrer breathing down his neck.

"He's been very interested in this," Hawkeye said. There was something... off about the way she said it, that made Mustang wonder what, exactly, had been going on between Hawkeye and her grandfather recently. "Once he found out about the children, he went a little overboard."

"This is going to be the front page tomorrow morning, isn't it?" There were more pressing practical concerns, such as whether he expected to keep these children in his apartment and how he was supposed to send them to school if they didn't speak Amestrian, but Mustang ignored them in favor of the publicity nightmare he was about to be subjected to.

"That we've arrested a bunch of insurgents for treason, conspiracy, and illegal human experimentation, yes," Hawkeye said. "That the two humans that had been experimented on have been released into your care, no."

"Good." Mustang didn't want to wake up tomorrow morning to a horde of reporters wanting to interview him. Nor did he want to have to stop the pyro girl from burning any of them. That would be a public relations disaster, unless he spun it...

He could spin it, Mustang realized, if he went with poor, traumatized, little girl is subject to torturous experiments and lashes out in response. Then she was passed off to the only person who had a hope of controlling her without resorting to straitjackets and solitary confinement, in hopes that she could be rehabilitated enough to live a normal life.

"Public policy is not to reveal the names or locations of minors," Hawkeye said. "It's considered cruel to open them to media scrutiny for something like this. Most of the papers wouldn't report who the children were, even if we told them."

"If we could tell them," Mustang said. He looked over at the children, scrutinizing them for another hint at their identities. The girl had gone from smug to mutinous, probably because she didn't think she was getting enough attention (that was going to be _fun_ to deal with), but the boy looked positively happy, or at least as happy as it was possible for someone spouting several first degree burns to be.

"Has anyone gotten around to asking the kids their names?" Fuery asked.

Mustang blinked. He had known, in the back of his mind, that someone was going to have to teach these kids Amestrian but he had forgotten how much they would be able to tell him even without knowing it. How hard would it be to convince them to draw pictures of what had happened to them? They wouldn't be able to give him much detail, because the kids couldn't know too much about alchemy, but any edge was worth having.

"They don't speak Amestrian, Fuery," Havoc said. "We can ask them anything we like, they're not going to answer."

"That's what body language is for," Fuery said. He bent over so that he was at eye level with the children, not very far, since he was so small to begin with, and pointed to himself. "Fuery," he said.

The girl looked at Fuery as though he were something slimy that had crawled into her shoes during the night, but the boy smiled. "Fuery," he repeated. Then he pointed, first to himself and then to the girl. "Zuko. Azula."

Fuery smiled. "Hello, Zuko and Azula. It's nice to meet you." Fuery had a lot of younger cousins, Mustang remembered. He might be a good person to keep around, because Mustang's experience with children was limited to the Elric brothers, neither of whom could really be considered a normal child.

"Do you think you can teach them how to speak Amestrian?" Mustang asked. They'd probably pick it up on their own, given enough time, but he was a little worried that the two of them (mainly, the girl) would decide that communicating with other people was beneath them and refuse to learn.

"You could make a sort of game," Fuery said. Mustang scowled, he had been hoping that Fuery would volunteer to do that. "Naming objects and pictures. Zuko would probably enjoy it."

Azula might too, if Mustang could figure out how to turn it into a competition. It might not be terribly healthy for the boy, though, because she wasn't likely stop until she had thoroughly beaten him. Maybe if he made the competition against himself, to see if she could learn Amestrian faster than he could learn whatever language she was speaking, it would work. He was an adult, he could swallow his pride and let a child beat him if it made her feel better.

Now, he was just stuck trying to house the kids. For some reason Mustang thought that Hawkeye would object to him making them share his couch, which meant he would need to find a larger apartment. Something with a spare bedroom that he could shove a bunk bed into.

"What am I supposed to do with them during the day?" Mustang asked, to no one in particular, although if he had had the chance to contest this decision with Grumman he would have brought it up. "I can't leave them alone at my apartment. Handing them over to childcare workers would defeat the purpose of me being the one taking care of them–" Not to mention that the girl would terrorize anyone she was left with. "Unless I'm expected to take a leave of absence."

"Fuhrer Grumman suggested that it might be easier for you to research the transmutation circle you discovered from your home," Hawkeye said. She sounded almost as put out about that as Mustang felt, probably because she was smart enough to know that _she_ was going to have to do his job while he was busy with this.

"So I am expected to take a leave of absence," Mustang said. Wonderful. He was going to call the Elric brothers first thing, so that at least he wasn't stuck _alone_ in a house with these two.


	14. Making Up

11th Day, Peach Moon, Year of the Tiger  
Prince Ozai

Ursa was avoiding him. For the first few hours Ozai was grateful, he had things to arrange and Ursa would only get in the way, but by noon he was starting to get worried. Ursa should have been panicked, terrified by the fact that her children were missing, and she should have come straight to him for answers. That was what Azulon had done, although he had admittedly known more than Ursa about what had gone on.

Ursa must have her own sources of information, which shouldn't have been a surprise, but wasn't something that Ozai was terribly happy about it. Ursa would be easier to control if she listened to him and only him and right now Ozai was at a tricky spot where he needed as much control as possible.

And, sooner rather than later, he was going to need new heirs, which meant cozying up to Ursa long enough for said heirs to be conceived. With that in mind, Ozai headed off to the garden. It was too early for fire lilies, but Ursa had always had a fondness for flowers of every kind and something was sure to be blooming.

Red roses might be considered a little too romantic, considering the situation, so Ozai plucked a handful of white ones before heading to Ursa's chambers.

He knocked gently on her door, because Ursa had never liked demands and was likely to interpret him banging on her door as exactly that.

After a couple of minutes, when Ursa had failed to respond, Ozai knocked a little louder. Just because she didn't like to be pushed, didn't mean that Ursa had the right to ignore him like this. She had married into the royal family, he had been born in and that made him her superior.

Ursa still did not answer, and Ozai found himself becoming furious. Even more infuriating was the knowledge that he couldn't just barge in while angry, if he wanted Ursa to like him instead of run off to one of the Fire Temple to 'pray' for her children's souls.

He knocked a third time, more of a bang than a knock, even though he tried his hardest to keep his anger in check.

"Ozai, what are you doing?" He wheeled around and there, obviously having come back from a visit to the turtle-duck pond by the dampness of her sleeves, was Ursa.

"I wanted to talk to you," Ozai said. He was blushing, he noticed in a distracted sort of fashion. As if this entire situation had to be any more embarrassing. He held out the flowers in his hand.

Ursa raised an eyebrow, looking down at the roses as though they had started to rot.

Ozai felt his face starting to heat. "I thought you were mad at me," he said. It came out more defensively than he wanted it to. Something about Ursa, he had never been able to figure out what but he hated it, had always kept him off balance around her.

"So you decided to bring me flowers as what? Some kind of bribe?" Ursa's voice took on a note of disdain, and Ozai remembered that she had always been oddly bimodal about gifts. Sometimes she loved them and other times... other times she reacted like this.

"I saw them and I thought they looked like you would like them," Ozai said. He managed to avoid raising his voice as he did so, but only barely. "And I needed to talk to you about Zuko and Azula anyway." There, Ursa wouldn't waste energy being angry at Ozai if she could be learning about what happened to Zuko and Azula.

Ursa's mouth twisted into a bitter sort of smile. "I've looked for them for hours. The entire staff and half the guard was looking for them the night they went missing, until Firelord Azulon called them off. Rumor has it you had something to do with that."

Ozai gulped. "I'm sorry, I should have talked to you about this earlier."

Ursa seemed a little mollified by his apology, but not nearly as much as Ozai would have liked.

"Zuko and Azula are not missing," Ozai said. It took him a little effort but he added, "I know exactly where they are."

"And you let me go thinking that they had vanished off the face of the earth– kidnapped or killed– for an entire day?" Rather than pulling away the way she had done in most of their fights in the past few years, Ursa stepped closer to Ozai, putting herself into striking range.

Ozai held up the roses in hopes that they would provide him some kind of defense against his angry wife. He couldn't very well fight back if he wanted her to like him. "I should have told you earlier. I'm sorry. I had a lot of things on my mind."

"You always do." Ursa deflated, her posture dropping into the resignation that had always come shortly before she ran away from him. "What was it this time?"

"When we had an audience with the Firelord and I spoke alone with him, I asked him to name me as his heir, as Iroh's bloodline has ended with Lu Ten's death," Ozai said. He was going to have to be careful about how he said the next piece, to make sure he appeared protective rather than stupid. "He was furious. He said that as punishment for my presumption, I should lose my firstborn as Iroh had lost his."

Ursa gasped, looking suitably appalled. "But he can't have meant for Zuko to die. He'd only have one grandchild left." Perhaps Ozai hadn't given his wife enough credit in political intrigue. He had expected her to be horrified by the idea of her precious Zuzu dying, not to be able to think things through better than Ozai had at the time.

"He didn't, but I was too distraught to think things through," Ozai said. "I hired a pair of earthbenders from the Colonies to stage a kidnapping– it was only supposed to be Zuko, but Azula was in his room at the time and so my employees took her as well– and get on the first boat to the Colonies, where my son would be safe."

Ursa smiled, a genuinely happy smile this time, and leaned in a little closer to her husband. "Azulon didn't fall for it, did he?" She sounded almost amused, like she thought that this entire mess was funny and was doing her level best to stop Ozai from noticing.

"No. He summoned me to his chambers and insisted I own up to my subterfuge." Ozai grimaced at the memory. "I admitted it readily enough, but I refused to tell him where the children were until he promised that they were in no danger." He would let Ursa come to her own conclusions as to how Azulon had truly intended Ozai to interpret his order and validate whatever idea she liked best. "I sent a messenger hawk to the ship telling them to return to the Capital. Zuko and Azula should be home before nightfall."

Ursa was actually getting teary-eyed. Ozai felt the tiniest bit guilty about playing her emotions like this but, he reasoned to himself, Ursa was soft. There was no way she would understand what he was doing, what he had to do, in order to keep hold of what little of his father's favor he had managed to regain.

Ozai sighed. "But–"

"But what?" Ursa asked. She stepped closer to Ozai, obviously seeking some kind of comfort from him even though she had to know that whatever was coming couldn't be that bad. The children were safe and that was all Ursa would care about.

"Zuko is to be named Iroh's heir," Ozai said. He did not even try to hide the bitterness in his voice. Ursa had always been a bit of a sucker for sob stories, and now that Ozai was firmly in her good books as a result of his 'brave' defense of his children he could take advantage of that.

Ursa squeezed Ozai's shoulder sympathetically. "I'm sorry, Ozai." She sounded sincere, but not particularly upset. Ozai decided to take that as a good sign: she was sincerely sorry that he was upset, but didn't care about his plans.

"I'll manage, Ursa," Ozai said. He resisted the urge to slip in a pet name, as that might be a little too fast for Ursa's taste. "The important part is that the children are safe."

* * *

A/N: Confession time: I'm not terribly familiar with the comics. The impression I've got from what I've seen of them is that Ozai was always abusive and by this point in time Ursa hated him. For the sake of this story, I'm assuming that 1) at some point in time Ursa and Ozai actually liked each other and 2) that their relationship at this point is repairable.


	15. Speculation

April 17, 1918  
Brigadier General Roy Mustang

Mustang picked up the phone and dialed, careful not to keep his eye off of the children for two long. He didn't want the girl doing something stupid to try and get his attention. Oddly, they seemed rather intrigued by the phone, staring at it and whispering to each other as though they were making some kind of bet about it.

The phone rang twice before being answered by a grumpy, but familiar voice. "Edward Elric speaking."

"Fullmetal." Mustang smiled. The kids– _Zuko and Azula_ , he should be calling them by their names– were still staring at him. It was more unnerving than it should have been, since they were only a couple of kids who didn't understand what was going on rather than anything truly dangerous.

Zuko grinned, the sort of grin Maes Hughes had had when he had just been proven right.

Azula scowled at him.

"Colonel." Fullmetal sighed, and Mustang's heart skipped a beat. He had forgotten that Fullmetal was married now and less likely to want to run off on short notice and solve some problem for Mustang. "What's going on?"

"We have a situation," Mustang said. "The insurgent group we've been tracking was experimenting on humans. We found the transmutation circle they were using for it, but we don't know how it works."

The was a pause at the other end, as though Fullmetal was trying to think of the polite way to say something offensive. "Why do you _want_ to know how it works?"

"We're not planning on using it on anyone else, if that's what you're worried about," Mustang said. Fullmetal, of all people, has=d the right to be concerned that the military might abuse alchemy. He saw most of the abuses during the time leading up to the Promised Day. "It was used on a couple of children. We want to know what the full effects were and how to reverse them."

The children might not appreciate that too much, but Mustang was currently convinced it would be for the best. Thus far he had seen no sign that either of them could control an existing flame, meaning that the only ethical use for the ability to manipulate fire (putting it out) was barred to them.

"And you want to know if I've heard of something like it?" Fullmetal paused, and Mustang could practically hear the battle currently taking place in the boy– _young man's_ mind. He wanted to help, but he didn't want to leave his new wife in Resembool for who knew how long. "Can you mail me a diagram of the circle?"

"I'd prefer to have some information sooner than that." Mail would take nearly as long as Fullmetal would to travel to East City, but without the benefit of having Fullmetal around. "The circle was based off of a nonagram. Do you know what those are used for?"

"I know that I've never used one." Mustang started, realizing that the– _Azula_ had left his field of vision. He twisted around, hoping she was still in the room somewhere. "I'll look through Hoenhiem's books, there might be something there, but I can't tell you much without being able to see the circle."

Something slammed into Mustang's side, knocking him off of his chair. The something (Azula) was giggling. So was Zuko, although he looked a little bit ashamed of it. He reached for the phone tentatively, which allowed Mustang enough time to snatch it back up.

"What was that?" Fullmetal's voice was concerned, bordering on frantic.

"Nothing important." Mustang grabbed Azula by the wrist and pulled her backwards, preventing her from ripping the phone out of his hands. "What do you know about using alchemy to enhance someone's physical abilities?"

Azula lit a fire in her palm and pressed it towards Mustang's face, forcing him to transmute the oxygen away from it before he was burned. "It's dangerous. The line between enhancement and human transmutation sounds simple enough– don't mess with souls and you'll be okay– but it's still possible to 'accidentally' open the gate."

"I don't think any of the alchemists doing the experiments opened the gate," Mustang said. None of the people taken prisoners showed any signs of paying the 'toll' that required. Though, it was possible that whoever had opened the gate had died of the resulting injuries.

"Good. We should be able to reverse whatever transmutation they performed without opening the gate ourselves." Fullmetal's words were slightly rushed, as though he was more relived than he wanted to let on that they wouldn't be needing to open the gate. "You said that you didn't know the _full_ effects of the transmutation."

"No." As helpful as it would be for Fullmetal to know everything, Mustang was a little reluctant to tell him all of what had happened. Fullmetal was likely to be insufferable about it, for the next several weeks at minimum.

"That implies that there are some effects you _have_ noticed." Azula made another grab for the phone, and Mustang was too distracted by stopping her to answer Fullmetal's unspoken question. "What was the point of calling me if you're going to be a cagey bastard about this and not tell me what you want me to do?"

"I'm a little distracted at the moment." While Azula had been making the obvious play, Zuko had snuck up on the phone and begun to tap on the back of it. Mustang didn't really care why because, while that was infinitely better than trying to steal the phone, it was still annoying as anything.

"Then call me back when you're not distracted." For half a second, Mustang was afraid that Fullmetal would hang up the phone without giving him a chance to explain anything. "What was that sound?"

" _Nothing important_." Mustang glared at Zuko, and the boy pulled his hand away from the phone as though it had burned him. "In answer to your question, the subjects of the experiment have the ability to incite spontaneous combustion in the region surrounding their hands."

The other end of the line was quiet for some seconds, during which time Mustang picked Azula off his lap and set her down on the floor. "They can light things on fire?"

"That's what I said. I don't know _how_ , because neither of them can speak Amestrian." If it hadn't been for the fact that Zuko and Azula spoke some sort of language that was mutually intelligible, Mustang might have thought that they had been through the Gateway of Truth and had lost some portion of their brains.

"Don't you need a spark in order for your flame alchemy to work?" Fullmetal asked. His voice was sharp and quick, suggesting that, now that he knew what was going on, he had started to dig into the problem. "Even after you went through Truth's Gate?"

"Yes." Mustang thought for a second. "I looked into creating sparks myself when I was learning flame alchemy, and decided that it wasn't worth the trouble." More specifically, that if he wanted to have his State Alchemist's certification before he was deployed, he needed to keep himself to the bare minimum of what would make a good show. "The only way I found to do it was to create a self-igniting substance and hope it produces a spark near where you want it to." He had stopped studying almost as soon as he realized he would need an entirely different transmutation circle in order to do that.

"So that's one possible way for them to do that." Fullmetal sounded pensive. "But they'd also need to be doing something like flame alchemy, manipulating the oxygen to make the fire move in the right direction."

Mustang stood up, dropping Azula on the floor before she could take another grab at the phone. "I'm not sure about that. They've been making steady flames." And juggling them, but that was beside the point.

"You can to that too right?" There was a scrambling sound at the other end of the phone, as though Fullmetal was trying to do something with his hands while talking. "I thought you just didn't do it because it isn't optimal for combat."

"I don't do it because it's damned difficult." Mustang regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth, they made it sound like he had given up or something. "Creating a sustained flame requires not just setting up the atmosphere to allow a fire to travel, but constantly supplying said fire with fuel and oxygen. It wouldn't be one transmutation, it would be _hundreds_. At least two or three a second."

"I'm not sure it's physically possible to do transmutations that quickly," Fullmetal said. "At least not one after another. I suppose since it is the same transmutation–"

"It's not," Mustang said. That was why it had taken him two years and more burns than he could count to get good enough at Flame Alchemy to earn his watch. "It uses the same circle, but the little details are different. Where exactly you're moving everything, for one. That would get harder the longer you maintained a flame. And they'd need a source of fuel. Flame alchemy works by setting up the target to be the fuel in the reaction, creating a string of oxygen to carry a spark to it and concentrating the oxygen around the target so that it combusts when the spark reaches it. They don't have a target to serve as a fuel source."

"What if they're doing it the other way around. Instead of transmuting oxygen to set off a spark, they're making fuel and then just letting it burn."

"All the self-igniting substances I looked into were either unreliable or extremely volatile." Which was not a trait that Mustang associated with Zuko and Azula's relatively gentle flames. "And I haven't seen anything in their hands when they make fire. I suppose they might be transmuted and controlling a gas, but I don't know of any off the top of my head."

"I'll look into that. It might help if we know what transmutation they're performing." A tapping sound came from the other end of the phone, as though Fullmetal were tapping on the phone itself. "Do they have any transmutation circles on them?"

Mustang grabbed one of Zuko's hands, hoping the boy wouldn't be too upset by it, and looked it over. "Not on their hands." That bothered Mustang more than he would like. What these children were doing _wasn't_ the circleless transmutation of someone who had been through the gate, they didn't use the hand motions for that, and it didn't appear to use a transmutation circle. "I suspect that the circle that was used on them contains the circle for the transmutation that they perform."

"And it was sort of imprinted on them so that they can always use it? I'm not sure that's possible." Fullmetal paused, and Mustang could picture him in his head, brow furrowed in concentration and fingers tracing out ideas in the air around him. "I'll call Al and ask him to look into it. Alkahestry might be a better way to understand this."


	16. Waiting

11th Day, Peach Moon, Year of the Tiger  
Princess Ursa

The knowledge that her children were safe and soon to return was enough to keep Ursa sustained through the rest of the day. To her annoyance, Zuko's room had been left as it was the night of the staged kidnapping and so Ursa busied herself arranging for the ruined bed to be removed from Zuko's room and replaced with a new one.

She also looked through the staff to see who had been responsible for leaving the destroyed room the way it had been, only to discover that Firelord Azulon had ordered the room untouched to preserve 'evidence' and evidently forgotten to rescind it when Ozai had told him what really happened to Zuko and Azula.

Perhaps the old man was losing his touch. Ursa avoided dwelling on that traitorous line of thought for too long, instead deciding to sort out what was going on with Ozai. He had virtually ignored her ever since Azula had started at the Royal Fire Academy for Girls, letting all his time be sucked into political maneuvering or drilling his young daughter in firebending. It wasn't much of a surprise that he had forgotten about Ursa entirely in his plans to keep his children safe.

From that perspective, the flowers were an apology, and probably an attempt to build up a sort of relationship again. Ursa was tempted to make her husband sweat a bit, as vengeance for him abandoning her first, but she had decided not to. She didn't want him thinking that he had no hope of winning her back and giving up, after all.

Ozai had always had a disturbing tendency not to see his projects through, abandoning them as soon as they rewards they promised started to look smaller or the progress he was making had started to slack off. It was probably why he had never had much interest in Zuko.

As sunset approached, Ursa went to the palace entrance, seating herself on the steps in front of the door, where she would be able to see Zuko and Azula returning from the end of the street.

Zuko was to be Iroh's heir. That bothered Ursa more than she would like to admit, and not solely because it put Ozai out of the direct line for the throne and gave him another reason to dislike his son. Traditionally, adopted children had very little to do with their former families.

Ursa could not quite see Iroh shutting her and Azula out of Zuko's life. Nor would it be entirely practical, with the current tiny size of the royal family. But Iroh could monopolize much of Zuko's time, take Ozai's place as Zuko's father, or decide that he wanted to mold Ursa's little Zuko into a copy of his own Lu Ten.

It might be best, Ursa thought, if Iroh never came back to the Capital. If he stayed out in the Colonies with his mother's family where he would not have to be reminded of the child he had lost at Ba Sing Se. He would have to return eventually, Ursa knew, but Azulon was healthy enough to live until Sozin's Comet returned, hopefully long enough for Iroh to cope with his son's death and Ursa to stitch her family back together.

By the time the sun had fully vanished behind the horizon and the first stars were becoming visible in the night sky, Ursa was worried. Ozai might have decided to bring the children home through a less visible door than the main entrance to the palace, but surely he would have found Ursa and told her if he had done that. He knew how much she had worried and he had seemed like he was trying to repair their relationship.

That thought was what kept Ursa sitting where she was, hoping that Zuko and Azula's ship had been delayed for some reason or that there had been a hang up at the docks. Anything that would explain why they weren't here when Ozai said they would be.

The moon was reaching its zenith and the night had turned cold when a servant came out of the palace. He had been running for some time, because when he bowed to Ursa he held the bow for long enough to catch his breath. "Princess Ursa, Prince Ozai wishes to speak with you in his rooms."

"Are Zuko and Azula all right?" Ursa asked, her voice tight with worry. Ozai might want to tell her himself, but Ursa didn't want to wait until she found him. She wanted to know what had happened right now.

"He didn't say." The servant looked absolutely terrified, and for a moment Ursa wondered what she had done to frighten him so. "He only asked me to find you." So it was probably something Ozai had done, once the children were sorted out Ursa was going to have to talk to him about the proper treatment of one's hired help.

"I'll be right in," Ursa said. She stood up slowly and walked inside at a dignified pace. It might be the middle of the night, but Ursa did not need to cause a commotion by running through the halls as though something were actually wrong. The servant could get away with it, but only because Ozai had a nasty habit of making servants run around terrified of not getting something fast enough.

Ursa let her pace pick up a little when they neared Ozai's room, where she was unlikely to meet anyone who hadn't noticed that something was going on. She threw open his door without bothering to knock, not willing to waste the time it would have taken.

Ozai was sitting at his desk, staring at a note in his hands. He did not seem to notice Ursa's arrival.

"Ozai," Ursa said, going over to him and shaking his shoulder gently. "What's happened?"

"There was an accident," Ozai said, his voice distant and almost entirely lacking in emotion, as though he were speaking of things that had happened long ago to other people. "The ship that Zuko and Azula were on, that I put them on, sank. The navy is still looking, but there is little hope of any survivors."

Ursa burst into tears. After a couple of seconds, Ozai looped an arm around her, pulling her onto his lap. He patted her shoulder, but Ursa only cried harder.

They sat like that all night.


	17. Changing

12th Day, Peach Moon, Year of the Tiger  
Princess Azula

They had spent the night in the hospital, shoved together on one bed, with the firebender General watching over them. Azula couldn't help but wonder why the man was still hanging around when there were lots of other people in and out of the room who could have looked after Azula and Zuko well enough. It wasn't like they were babies who needed to be watched all the time. Especially not Azula.

The nurses had given them new clothes to wear, clean and white. Naturally, Azula had put up as much of a fuss as she could about being forcibly changed into them. White was the color of death and mourning and Zuko and Azula's new captors were probably trying to scare them by making them wear it. Azula refused to let it get to her.

Like she was right now. The handle that the firebender had spoken into, the one that Zuko kept insisting was part of an intercom, had been placed on the top of a cabinet, well out of the children's reach. That was a sure sign that they were supposed to leave it alone.

Of course, as soon as the firebender had started nodding off, Azula had started eyeing it. Now that the man was well and truly asleep, she had crawled out of bed and stood and the base of the cabinet, trying to decide how to best get the thing down without waking the firebender.

The wire that trailed from the thing was still dangling, so if Azula _really_ wanted to get the thing down, she could just pull it. If she caught it before it crashed against anything, the firebender might sleep through it, but Azula wasn't willing to risk that. It wasn't worth getting the handle down if it was only going to be taken away seconds later.

The other option was to climb. Zuko could definitely do it, he was good at sneaky things like climbing, and Azula could get him to do it for her, as a way to prove that the handle belonged to an intercom (it didn't, and Zuko would realize that as soon as he got a good look at it, but he wouldn't be able to do it if it was up there.

A knock on the door made Azula jump. The firebender, asleep in his chair, didn't seem to notice.

Another knock, louder and more insistent. Zuko got out of bed and walked over to the door. Azula glared at him, hoping he would understand that answering the door just because someone knocked on it was a bad idea.

Zuko pulled the door open anyway. It was Fuery and a couple of others that Azula thought were probably the firebender General's aides, Havoc and Hawkeye, if she remembered rightly.

Fuery held up a bag, chattering excitedly. Hawkeye quieted him with a look, glaceing meaningfully at the sleeping firebender. Fuery nodded and whispered something back, looked out the door as though he thought they might go someplace else to deal with the contents of the bag.

Azula was glad when Hawkeye shook her head. This entire situation was bad enough without being taken off to a different place _again_. Also, Azula wanted to know what was in the bag, just a little bit, and finding another empty room would take time.

Not that it mattered that much because, even though the contents of the bag were almost certainly intended for Azula and Zuko, they were probably something stupid and not worth getting excited over, like clothes. Clothes were a necessity, one that Azula and Zuko were mostly lacking at the moment, but they were unworthy of much attention, especially by a solider. Father had said so.

Only, clothes were enough to make Fuery excited because he pulled out the first outfit, a pink and orange dress that would have made Ty Lee proud, with something that Azula would called a squeal, if she hadn't been familiar with how Ty Lee acted when she was excited.

Azula raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms in a way that she hoped would signal that she was not Ty Lee and refused to dress like her without good reason– if these people weren't too dense to understand that.

Fuery seemed to, handing the dress to Havoc without trying to make Azula wear it.

The next thing he pulled out of his bag was bright _green_. Azula was shocked. These were Water Tribesmen, not anyone who should be wearing green. To her horror, Fuery was unable to recognize shock when he saw it, and leaned over, pulling the green shirt over Azula's head.

She lit it on fire. How, exactly Azula wasn't sure, because she was too busy panicking to be bothered with silly things like that. Deep breath in, deep breath out. Azula needed to calm down, so that she could put the fire out, but all Azula could remember was one of her firebending instructors, the one who's hair she had lit on fire (only mostly accidentally) after he had singled her out of his class for not jumping high enough.

He had screamed, panicked, and the flames had consumed him. There had been a new firebending teacher the next day and Azula had never seen the first one again. Deep breath in, deep breath out.

The fire that surrounded Azula's face vanished, much to her shock. She would never have admitted it to anyone, but Azula had not been nearly composed enough to put the flames out by herself. Someone else had to have done it, a specific someone else, because there was no way dum-dum Zuzu could put out a fire when Azula couldn't.

The firebender was not longer sleeping in his chair. He was sitting up, his hands spread as though he had been startled and not recovered yet.

Zuko was looking at the man as though he had done something extraordinary and wonderful and that was enough to make Azula scowl. She would have put the fire out by herself in just a minute, if he hadn't interfered.

She was a prodigy, better than Zuko and all the other students at the Royal Fire Academies. She didn't _need_ help.

Zuko walked up to Azula and bumped her shoulder. "Are you all right?"

"Of course I am." Azula held her head up high, even though she had no idea what her head was like.

Zuko looked rather skeptical, but rather than calling Azula on her lie, he pointed at the firebender. "Aren't you going to thank him?"

"For what? And how am I supposed to thank one of these barbarians when they don't even speak properly?" Azula turned away from Zuko, so that she could face the wall and assess the damage to her head a little more circumspectly.

Her face was definitely burned, not much worse than a very bad sunburn and unlikely to scar. Her hair was worse and Azula would have to bear the shame of a cropped head until it grew back.

Behind her, Azula could hear Zuko babbling to the stupid barbarians, "Azula wants to wear red clothes like this. Or this. See. _Red_."

Zuko's instructions were blotted out by the stamp of boots. The firebender had decided to examine his handiwork personally, then. Azula hissed, a gout of flame slipping out between her lips.

For half a second, Azula was frozen in shock. She had heard of breath of fire, spend three months unsuccessfully attempting to do it herself after Uncle Iroh had shown it to her, and now she had managed it without even trying.

She hissed again, focusing, and the fire obeyed her. Not much bothered by the fact that this was happening now instead of months ago, Azula turned around, intent on showing off her new skill to the only person in the room who would appreciate it.

She was met by the glaring firebender. Annoyed, Azula breathed out another lick of flame. It was easy now that she had gotten the hang of it, and if Azula had had a little less self control, she would have spent the next several hours flicking out flames the way a snake flicks out it's tongue.

The firebender let out an exasperated breath, holding up his hand as though he wanted to slap it against his face. Azula decided to take that as a sign that she was the one in control right now.

The group playing with the clothes, Zuko was already wearing a black shirt Azula noted with a certain amount of distaste, turned to look. Azula smiled at them, the special smile she knew freaked people out.

The group, particularly Hawkeye, did not look at all impressed. Azula's smile slid into a scowl and she blew another lick of flame out of her mouth.

The firebender said something unintelligible, gesturing to Azula as though he was annoyed by this new development.

Zuko pouted, but quickly forced his face into a sort of smile. Obviously he was insanely jealous and trying to hide it. Azula couldn't blame him, after all she was already better than him at everything important. This was just icing on the cake. "When did you learn breath of fire, Azula?"

"Just now." Azula puffed out her chest in pride, but the tiniest bit of disappointment ran through her as she said it. What was the point of learning new firebending moves if Father wasn't around to see them? "It's remarkably easy, Zuzu. I'm surprised you never managed to figure it out yourself."

Zuko frowned, most likely at the memory of the months and months he had spent out in the gardens, desperately trying to make any sort of flame. "You should change your clothes. I think those ones belong to the hospital. Look, I even found you a red dress." He held it up, looking rather desperate, as though he hoped rather than expected Azula to be distracted by it.

Sadly, the dress was actually rather nice, the kind of thing Azula would have picked out herself if she had had the opportunity. It was almost a shame that she had to turn it down on principle. "I'm not wearing any of their stupid clothes." She crossed her arms in front of her chest.

"Why not?" Zuko looked absolutely shocked for half a second, before bursting into giggles.

"What?" If there was something funny about this situation, and there _wasn't_ it was just Zuko being stupid, then Azula deserved to know about it.

"You aren't going to run around naked are you?" When Azula didn't respond, Zuko added, "Because you're wearing their clothes right now."

Azula sniffed. "Don't be ridiculous. I'm a Princess of the Fire Nation. It would be unbecoming for me to walk around naked. Of course I'll wear their clothes. Just not those ones." Azula stretched herself up to her full height, hoping to preserve what little dignity she had left.

"I think you're the one being ridiculous," Zuko said. "You're just being stubborn because you don't want to admit that you can't take care of yourself. Or get yourself home. Well, I think that if we ever want to go home, we need to figure out how to talk to these people and let _them_ figure it out. And that means playing along."

"That's giving up," Azula said. "I'm ashamed of you, Zuko. The only thing you had going for you was that you weren't a quitter. But I suppose even _that_ was too much for you to keep up."


	18. Drawing

12th Day, Peach Moon, Year of the Tiger  
Prince Zuko

 _The only thing you had going for you was that you weren't a quitter._ The words rang through Zuko's head all morning, as he ate breakfast, as he climbed into the backseat of some sort of wheeled palanquin, as he was shown to a bedroom in a small house, handed the bag of clothes Fuery had brought and left alone to make himself at home.

 _But I suppose even_ that _was too much for you to keep up_. Zuko dropped the bag of clothes and punched the wall, leaving a smoldering print that did nothing to alleviate the ache in Zuko's chest.

He wasn't giving up. He was being _smart_ , the way that his parents wanted him to be. He had no way to go home, no idea where to start, but the adults would be able to figure it out. They were the ones who had brought Zuko and Azula here and they ought to be able to get them back.

Once they figured out how Zuko and Azula had gotten here in the first place. Which they would because they were in the army and they were actively fighting the people who had captured Zuko and Azula in the first place. It was only a matter of time.

There was a knock on Zuko's door, and it opened half a second later. The Firebender General stuck his head into the room and groaned when he saw the mark Zuko had left on the wall.

Zuko's stomach twisted into a knot. Mom had taught him to be careful with his things and even more careful with other people's things. And here some person had been kind enough to let Zuko into his house and Zuko had gone and burned it.

"I'm sorry," Zuko said, before realizing that the Firebender General would have had no idea what he had said. He scowled at the thought.

The Firebender General gritted his teeth as though he was trying very hard to stop himself from lighting something on fire. He must be _really_ mad then, even more upset than he had been when Azula had lit herself on fire.

Why Zuko burning his wall was worse than Azula lighting herself on fire, Zuko wasn't entirely sure. _Hurt people is worse than hurt things_ was something his mother had said often enough, especially when Azula tried to get creative with her games.

He had put her out, Zuko remembered. That was why he had had to be calm, because he needed to be in control to put Azula's fire out and stop her from hurting herself. Now that nothing was on fire, he could be as angry as he liked. Which meant that Zuko was going to be in trouble for something Azula had done. Again.

The only question was what form his punishment would take. Mom had always lectured, but the Firebender General couldn't very well do that if Zuko couldn't understand him. Dad had been harsher, preferring to send Zuko to bed without supper or forbid him from practicing with his dao.

And he hit. Only once or twice, when Zuko was _really_ bad and he was sure that Mom wouldn't find out, but it still happened. _Pain is the best teacher_ was what he had said the first time, when Mom really had found out.

The Firebender General sighed. Zuko shot another glance at him and decided that he looked more resigned than angry now. That should have made Zuko feel better, but it only feel more guilty and the tiniest bit angry.

Azula was younger than Zuko, she was expected to have a harder time with her emotions. Zuko was the big brother and he wasn't supposed to be so stupid as to burn things just because he was a little upset. Especially not on purpose, which was what Zuko had done.

The Firebender General started, looking with a kind of horror at Zuko's hands. Zuko looked down. They were flaming again.

He took a deep breath and put himself out. The Firebender General was still staring at Zuko as though there was something wrong with him. He hadn't looked at Azula like that. At least Zuko didn't _think_ he had looked at Azula like that.

The Firebender General bent down and patted Zuko's shoulder, muttering something that was probably supposed to be soothing. "I don't like it here," Zuko said, knowing that the Firebender General wouldn't understand him. "I want to go home to Mom and Dad, even if Dad likes Azula best. Please please _please_ figure out how to send us home."

Zuko sniffled, trying to keep himself from the indignity of crying. He wasn't a baby, he was big boy and that meant no wasting time crying when he could be doing something productive to get them back home.

But there didn't seem to be anything Zuko could do to get home. Keeping up his firebending practice so that he wouldn't be lighting things on fire accidentally was a start, but it wasn't going to get them home one it's own.

Finding out how they had been brought here was a good idea, but Zuko didn't have any way to do it. He couldn't speak the language or read any of the signs. Even the drawing on the Firebender General's gloves, currently hanging off the man's belt and just about Zuko's eye level were beyond him.

Sure, he could make out a flame and a little lizard, but all the other lines had to mean something and Zuko had no idea what it could be. If only it was all in pictures, then Zuko would be able to understand it all.

Pictures! That was what Zuko could do: he could draw pictures of everything that had happened to him and Azula and that way the Firebender General and his soliders would know exactly how the not-Earth Kingdom people had brought them here.

Too excited to bother with proper manners, Zuko pulled away from the Firebender General and bounced off into the rest of the house, confident that he could find drawing, or better, painting materials somewhere in the house.

It took him nearly an hour, but Zuko scrounged up some paper in a desk drawer, along with a number of colored sticks that left marks when rubbed against it. Zuko was not much of an artist, especially not with smear-sticks instead of proper paints, but his drawings were recognizable.

Him and Azula, sitting on his bed. The flash of light and the bed falling over as they landed in the circle. Their trip around the hospital and being caught by the not-Earth Kingdom forces. Time stuck in the cell and then escaping and finding the Firebender General.

Zuko looked at it and smiled. It wasn't much, but it was something.


	19. Moving

12th Day, Peach Moon, Year of the Tiger  
Ty Lee

Azula had not been at school today. Or yesterday. Or the day before that. Ty Lee might have thought that she was sick, only Azula _never_ got sick. And if she had, then she would have sent for Ty Lee and Mai to come entertain her while she couldn't do anything.

She might have gone to Ember Island, except that the Royal Fire Academy for Girls did not allow students to take off school for things like that. They might make an exception for Azula, because she was a _Princess_ , but Ty Lee was fairly sure that Azula wouldn't make an exception for herself. She had been too proud of her perfect attendance for that.

Her sisters were all busy doing 'big girl' things that they wouldn't let Ty Lee join in in and her parents were off having dinner with someone important who didn't like children, so Ty Lee decided to go visit Mai.

Mai's house wasn't far, no more than twenty minutes walk, but Ty Lee hurried all the same. She wanted someone else to play with, and she could always linger on the way home if she wasn't ready to go to bed yet by the time Mai's mother kicked her out.

Or maybe Mai's mother would let them have a sleepover. Princess Ursa had, twice with Ty Lee and Mai and once with just Ty Lee. That would be so much fun! Even without Azula, because Azula was the most fun person ever, even if she was a little mean sometimes.

"Did you hear about the Prince and Princess?" The voice caught Ty Lee's attention, and she stopped in her tracks so that she could listen. It belonged to an older man, a servant, judging by the fact that he was holding a bucket of water.

"It's a shame," a woman said, one of the group of servants that had gathered around the old man. "Makes me want to join the army. That Earth Kingdom scum. What did a couple of children ever do to them?"

The group all nodded and muttered agreement.

"I'm more concerned about the succession," another woman said, this one with an aura almost the same shade of red as Azula's. A number of other people in the group glared at her, as though she had said something bad. "First Prince Lu Ten. Now, Prince Zuko and Princess Azula. And I hear that Prince Iroh is missing too. At this rate, the entire royal family will be gone by the end of the year."

Gone... but that made it sound like Azula and Zuko had _died_. Which was ridiculous, because Azula was indestructible and Zuko was her brother and they were both safe in the Homelands instead of out fighting in the war the way Prince Lu Ten had been.

"Princess Ursa is still of childbearing age," another member of the group said. "And Prince Ozai was smart enough to stay in the palace where it's safe. Give it another year and we'll have a new heir. On both counts."

"You're both being callous," the first woman said. Her sky blue aura darkened, as though there were a storm rolling in. "With the little Prince and Princesses newly dead. Mourn for a bit. Or at least keep your ghoulish commentary to yourselves."

Ghoulish. That was a nice word, well not nice exactly, but all slimy smooth and exactly like what it described.

Only what it described was Zuko and Azula being dead. Ty Lee's stomach curdled, twisting in on itself until she thought she might puke. She didn't _want_ Zuko and Azula, especially not Azula her very best friend in the whole wide world, to be dead.

Those people _had_ to be wrong. Ty Lee was tempted to march up to them and say so, but she much more wanted to prove that they were wrong. That meant a trip to the palace, or because Ty Lee couldn't really show up uninvited, Mai's house.

Mai lived right across the street from the palace and her parents let her sit in on grown-up conversations. She would know what had really happened to Azula and Zuko and if she didn't then they could both go to the palace together. It was less scary that way.

Ty Lee was running now, sprinting as fast as she could even though her legs were starting to burn. Because the sooner she reached Mai's house the sooner everything would be all right again.

Five minutes later, sweaty and out of breath, Ty Lee pounded on Mai's door.

The door was whipped open in seconds by a servant who looks Ty Lee up and down contemptuously, probably not pleased by what her run did to her state of dress.

Ty Lee smiled wide, because staying cheerful was the only thing she could still do. "Can I speak to Mai, please?"

The servant nodded stiffly, but waved Ty Lee inside. "You may wait in the front parlor. Try not to break anything."

Ty Lee sniffed. Sure, she was a little messy, but that was because she had been running and not because she was some kind of urchin who broke things. She perched herself on the edge of one of the chairs in the parlor rather than doing the sort of gymnastics she found comforting, just so that the servants wouldn't be able to criticize her behavior.

"What are you here for?" Mai asked before she had even entered the room. Her eyes were red and puffy, as though she had been crying recently, and Ty Lee wondered if she had already heard the news.

"I was going to come visit you and I heard some people saying that Azula and Zuko are dead," Ty Lee said, the words coming out in a rush that was bordering on incomprehensible.

"So?" Mai's voice was rougher than usual, her normally colorless aura tinted with an unusual amount of green, bright and poisonous.

"So?" Ty Lee repeated. "Don't you _care_ at all? Azula and Zuko are dead!" They were going to have to have a funeral and everything for them, Ty Lee realized. She hadn't thought about that before. There would be an entire day of mourning for the dead Prince and Princess.

"So some people said they were." Mai crossed her arms in front of her chest and rolled her eyes. "People say all sorts of stupid things. That doesn't make any of it true."

"But Azula hasn't been to school for a looong time."

Mai sighed. "She's been gone for _three_ days, Ty Lee. That's hardly any time at all. She probably came down with a cold or something. Now, unless you've got something interesting to say, go away."

"Do you want to play hide and explode?" Ty Lee asked. "Or another game, because I remember you not liking that one too much."

"It's not the game I didn't like, it was playing it with Azula," Mai grumbled. Some of the green had leeched out of her aura, so Ty Lee decided that she was feeling better. "And you can't play it with only two people."

"Oh." Ty Lee said. "We can play some other game, then. Only, I would like it very much if we played a game with moving and not sitting still and being very quiet because I don't like those games very much."

"Really? I never would have guessed." The corner of Mai's mouth twitched in what counted as a smile with Mai. "Well, then what say we go out and find someone else to play hide and explode with."

Ty Lee smiled. "I know who we can play with! My new neighbors. I've seen one of them walking to school." She was a girl, a semester younger than Ty Lee and friendly enough on the way to school, but as soon as they came home she vanished back into her house and refused to come out.

"Just one of them?" Mai raised an eyebrow and her aura flickered in a manner that Ty Lee seldom saw, flickering from purple to colorless instead of changing gradually, and had never bothered to ask Grandmother about. "Are the others all too young for school?" Mai's nose wrinkled up, and Ty Lee agreed with her. Playing with babies was never much fun.

"Nope! The other one's your age, I think, and she doesn't go to school." Not as far as Ty Lee could see, and she had waiting outside their front gate until her father had made her come inside.

"Doesn't go to school," Mai repeated. Her aura was flickering faster now, and though Ty Lee could see no hint of it in Mai's face, she thought that Mai must be intrigued by that. "Is she sick or something?"

"The or something one," Ty Lee said. "I've seen her outside a couple of times and she didn't _look_ sick."

Mai's aura settled into the purple color and the muscles around her face tensed, as though she were only just stopping herself from smiling.

"My Dad says it's rude to spy on people," Ty Lee said. She wasn't sure it would affect Mai much, because that was the kind of statement that Azula would scoff at. "Even if they are from the Colonies."

Mai sighed, the purple in her aura washing out until it was almost colorless again. "I suppose it's just as likely that they couldn't get the older girl into the Fire Academy for Girls and hired a tutor instead."

Ty Lee nodded in agreement. "That doesn't mean we can't check, you know. Just to make sure."

"Just to make sure," Mai repeated, the barest hint of a smile touching her lips.


	20. Travel

April 18, 1918  
Brigadier General Roy Mustang

It was right about bedtime that Zuko got over whatever it was that had driven him to run away from Mustang and emerged from the recesses of the (far bigger than Mustang had wanted) house, clutching a handful of papers.

Mustang sighed. He had spent enough time with Elysia Hughes to know how this worked. The child proudly handed over the artwork and Mustang cooed over it as though it were wonderful when it in fact resembled nothing so much as a crayon box vomiting all over the paper.

Mustang took the paper anyway, because he understood what having an adult who seemed to care about you meant to a small child with no parents and since he had been designated as the 'adult who cared' he was going to do his duty.

The drawings were much better than Mustang had expected, making him thing that Zuko had had art lessons at some point in his life, and they told a strange story. Unfortunately, it wasn't one that Mustang had much time to puzzle out before he had to put the children to bed. Repeatedly, in Azula's case.

When the latest escape attempt had been dealt with and Mustang was almost sure that the girl had fallen asleep, it was as much as he could do to stop himself from sighing in relief. At least, before he noticed that Hawkeye had slipped away. Then it was all he could do to keep himself from cursing. "Hawkeye," he called as loudly as he dared out into the hallway.

"Do you need something, General?" Hawkeye leaned around the corner into the living room, already wearing her coat.

"I need you to tell me what you think of this," Mustang said, taking the drawings from where he'd stashed them in his pocket and holding them out.

Hawkeye gave him a rather quizzical look, but came over and took the drawings. She frowned at the paper, one of her frowns that was thoughtful rather than genuinely upset. "It looks a great deal as though the transmutation circle was used to transport Zuko and Azula into the Group's headquarters."

"That it does." Mustang scratched at the top of his head thoughtfully. "I'm going to have to talk to Fullmetal again. This changes the context of the circle entirely. If he or his brother investigate this thinking that it's intended to alter someone's physiology when it's actually–" He broke off, having realized the major problem with this. "If the circle was intended to bring them here, how did they end up generating flames?" Mustang chewed his lip for a second, buying himself time to think. "I suppose it might have been a side effect of their journey."

"I don't think that's likely, sir," Hawkeye said. She fanned out the drawings, holding them out so that Mustang could see them all. "The fire shows up in these, during their first encounter with the guards, but neither of them look very surprised by it and none of the drawings show any experimentation."

Mustang wouldn't have expected them to, not when he would have left out irrelevant things like that when he was explaining how he had gotten someplace to someone else. Although, Elysia did have a tendency to include all sorts of extraneous details when recounting events, so maybe a child who had just gained the ability to create fire _should_ have included drawings about that.

"If there were people who could spontaneously generate fire we should have heard about it before," Mustang said. "These two can't be the first ones." Unless they were the subjects of an ethically dubious experiment somewhere else, which didn't exactly fit in with the drawing of two children sitting on a luxuriously oversized bed. "And the military applications of such an ability would be tremendous. If it's remotely common where they come from, then that people should have taken over quite a bit of territory."

Hawkeye nodded. "They've got gold eyes," she said. "The same as the Elric brothers."

During his time in the hospital after the Promised Day, Mustang had been subjected to a number of lectures and discussions about Van Hohenhiem the human philosopher's stone who had traveled through Xing and Amestris since Xerxes had been destroyed in a transmutation similar to the one that had nearly obliterated Amestris. "You think these two are from Xerxes?"

"I think we should ask the Elric brothers about the people of Xerxes," Hawkeye said. "What they looked like, how they lived, and if any of them who were out of the country at the time of it's destruction would have settled down somewhere."

"I don't think the Elric brothers will be of much help with that." Not after Hohenheim had died without explaining much of it to them, judging by Edward's rants and Alphonse's regrets. Mustang sighed. It looked like he had yet another topic to research. And another disturbing possibility for what the transmutation circle they had found did. "If there were any Xerxian survivors who could manipulate fire, they should have settled themselves in Amestris or Xing."

"It's no unheard of for refugee groups to travel further," Hawkeye said. There was no hint in her voice that she had even considered the possibility of time travel. "And they might have inherited the eyes and the fire from two separate groups. That would explain why they don't have Ed and Al's golden hair."

Mustang wasn't entirely sure that the golden hair was really an inheritance from Xerxes. Plenty of people in Amestris had blond hair, even if it wasn't as vibrant as the Elric brothers'. "It's also possible that they came from a time before the golden hair showed up."

Hawkeye raised an eyebrow. "I wasn't away that alchemy could allow someone to travel in time."

"And I wasn't aware that it could allow someone to travel through space," Mustang said. "Both are completely unprecedented and determining which is more difficult is going to take some research." And, ideally, a very long conversation with the person who had made the circle.

There was a thumping sound and for one horrible moment Mustang thought that Azula was up again and needed to be herded back to bed. Then the thumping was followed by a frenetic ringing as Mustang realized that there was someone at the door.

He had half a second to wonder who could possibly be at the door at this hour that would bother ringing the doorbell before coming in before he heard a vaguely familiar voice say,"Edward, you're going to break the doorbell."

An even more familiar voice answered, "It's a doorbell, it can take a little swinging. I wonder what's taking the General so long? You don't think Havoc lied to us, do you?"

Mustang jumped up and bolted for the door, hoping to catch those two before they shouted out anything too incriminating for the entire neighborhood to hear. "I don't think that Lieutenant Havoc would lie about something as important as this."

Fullmetal snorted. "He once told me that one of the privates was secretly a Drachman spy and that my assignment was to follow him around a keep a record of everyone he talked to and everyplace he went."

"You _believed_ him?"

"Of course not. I–"

Mustang pulled the door open. "Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Elric," he said, probably a little more loudly than was really necessary. "How good of you to drop by. Do come in." He stepped out of the doorway and waved them both in, shooting an icy look at Fullmetal as he did so.

Fullmetal glared back, but he waiting until Mustang had shut the door to say, "You might have mentioned that there were kids involved yourself, instead of waiting for it to be announced over the radio."

It took Mustang a couple of second to work out what Fullmetal meant. "If you put your life on hold every time a child gets hurt you won't have much of a life," he warned.

"Like you're one to talk," Fullmetal shot back. "Your entire life revolves around becoming Fuhrer. When was the last time _you_ did anything that didn't involve the military?"

"I went to your wedding," Mustang answered. He supposed that Fullmetal might try to argue that that counted as military related because they met in the military, and so he quickly moved on to more important matters. "What do you know about Xerxes?"

"What does that have to do with anything?" Fullmetal demanded. His shoulders hitched up defensively and Mustang realized that he had probably touched a nerve. Alphonse had been upset when he had learned of his father's death, and had privately confessed that at least some of it was because he had lost any change of learning about his father's heritage from anything other than a (less-than-reliable) history book.

"Zuko and Azula– the children we found– both have golden eyes," Mustang said. "It's possible that they were experimented on and that was a side effect, but we're also considering the possibility that the transmutation circle only brought them here."

Fullmetal's brow furrowed, his head cocked to the side. "I've never heard of a transmutation that did anything like that." He looked more thoughtful than incredulous, and Mustang briefly wondered what he was thinking off, if not something he had encountered like it before.

"That Xingese girl– the one your brother brought to your wedding– could perform alkahestry at a distance by using knives," Mustang said. He knew full well who Mei Chang was, it would have been hard to miss the Emperor of Xing's favorite sister in the circles he frequented, but Mustang preferred not to name names when he spoke about those not present. It made it more difficult for eavesdroppers to work out who one was talking about.

"At a distance, yes" Fullmetal said, "But she hasn't done anything that couldn't be done by an alchemist." Fullmetal's frown deepened into a scowl and Mustang thought he might actually be angry, although Mustang was at a loss to know what had caused it. "Have you asked Al about any of this?"

"No." Mustang had expected Fullmetal to call up his brother as soon as he had gotten off the phone with Mustang and explained everything. "I was planning on writing a him a letter."

"You've had an entire day and you haven't done it?" Out of the corner of his eye, Mustang could see Hawkeye nod. She was too proper to smile, but Fullmetal and his wife were both grinning.

"I've had other things to worry about," Mustang said, hoping to cut off any comments about paperwork and his tendency to procrastinate. "Like finding housing for two miniature pyromaniacs on short notice. As well as stopping the aforementioned pyromaniacs from lighting anything important on fire, including themselves."

"They lit _themselves_ on fire?" Mrs. Elric looked absolutely horrified and Mustang suspected she was only seconds away from demanding to know what horrible things he had done to make self-immolation seem like a reasonable option.

"It was only one of them and we're reasonably sure it was an accident," Hawkeye said, extruding a sort of calm that Mustang could never manage. "She's not even hurt much. Just a couple of first degree burns."

Mrs. Elric looked relieved. Fullmetal looked concerned. He opened his mouth to make some remark, but Mrs. Elric cut him off with a jab of her elbow. "It's getting late," she said. "And _someone_ hasn't been getting enough sleep lately."

Mustang coughed, hoping that would cut off any further explanation from the newlyweds. "The guest room is down the hallway, second door on the left." Mustang paused, as it occurred to him that the Elrics might have already made arrangements to stay in a hotel or something. But no– Fullmetal was carrying a pair of suitcases. "Count yourself lucky that Hawkeye insisted on getting a place large enough for guests. You'd be stuck on the couch otherwise."

"Sure." The vowel was drawn out in disbelief, as though Fullmetal actually thought that Mustang would give up his bed so that a certain uninvited pipsqueak wouldn't have to spring for his own shelter.

"I'm flattered that you think me so generous, but–"

Mustang was cut off by Hawkeye clearing her throat. "I'm sure that you're all tired," she said, with a steel in her voice that would brook no disagreement. "So I know that if I leave, you'll all go straight to bed."

"Of course," Mrs. Elric said, in a voice that was far too chipper to be natural. She grabbed Fullmetal by the arm and started dragging him down the hall. "We'll see you in the morning, General Mustang."


	21. Negotiations

April 19, 1918  
Winry Elric

It took only a few minutes of listening to Ed and General Mustang speculate on the transmutation circle they had found and its many possible interpretations for Winry to turn her attention to the children.

Zuko and Azula, the General had called them, and they certainly didn't _look_ like pyromaniacs. Not when they were sitting sedately on the end of the couch playing with the telephone as though they were toddlers.

It was quite clear that if they keep it up much longer, they'll end up accidentally calling someone and Winry thought she should probably stop that (quite apart from the bill, what if they called the fire department or the MPs), so she walked over and picked up the phone.

Azula glared at her, and made a grab for the phone. When Winry held it up out of her reach, she took a step backwards and held out her hand, a flame dancing on her palm. It would have been kind of adorable, her trying to intimidate Winry that way, if it weren't so dangerous.

Winry fingered her wrench, itching to give little Azula a rap or two on the head. Winry thought that might be just what the girl needed to teach her not to threaten people with fire. Unfortunately, it might also be just what she needed to nudge her from threatening people with fire to actually burning people, and Winry did not want to be caught in the middle of that.

Besides, Granny had started making pointed remarks about how to properly discipline children and whacking them with wrenches was definitely not one of the approved methods.

Azula's eyes narrowed even further when it became clear that Winry wasn't going to hand over the phone and she bared her teeth before _leaping_ at Winry, swinging the handful of fire forward in an unmistakable attack.

Winry stumbled backward, landing on her bottom. The fireball went right over her head, and Winry had half a second to wonder whether that was intentional or if it was because Azula had expected her opponent to fight her rather than fall down before the phone was snatched from her hands.

Another half a second and Ed was by Winry's side, crouched protectively between her and Azula. "I'm fine," Winry said. "I'm perfectly fine, Ed. She startled me, that's all."

"There's a scorch mark on the wall," Ed said, his voice distant and detached as though he were cataloging evidence at a crime scene rather than comforting his wife. "Boy, you weren't kidding when you said they were pyromaniacs, General."

"Are they always like this?" Winry asked. She looked over at the bandage on Azula's face. Five minutes ago, it had seemed like something horrible, worthy of sympathy, but now she wasn't quite so sure. It depended upon what the girl had been trying to light on fire when she had burned herself.

General Mustang's shoulder twitched in a kind of suppressed shrug. "I've only had them for two days. It's a little early to be drawing conclusions about what they're normally like."

Winry figured that was the General's way of refusing to say that this was about how he had expected them to act. Azula, meanwhile, had elected to ignore the grown-ups in favor of twisting the rotary dial some more. "Do you think that she'd lose interest if I showed her how to make a call with it?"

"They've already seen me use a phone before," Mustang said. "I doubt that another demonstration is going to change their fascination." His eyes narrowed and for half a second Winry was afraid that he was going to hurt the little girl, but then he took a deep breath and pinched the bridge of his nose.

Azula chuckled. There was something about the sound– unless it was merely the fact that she seemed to enjoy having charred the wall and frightened all the adults so much– something that made the hairs on the back of Winry's neck stand up.

Zuko seemed to be bothered by it too, having retreated behind the sofa to watch the confrontation with wide eyes.

"I don't see what the harm in letting her play with a phone is," Ed said, after a couple of seconds of silence.

"What if she calls someone?" Winry demanded.

"The General's rich, he can afford to pay for a couple of phone calls." Ed flashed a toothy smile in the General's direction. "Right, General?"

"If this is because I haven't called Alphonse and asked him about how alkahestry might allow for people to travel through time or space, then–" Mustang continued on along that vein, but Winry wasn't listening to him. She was too busy thinking her way around the little girl with the phone.

The obvious thing to do was march over there and take the phone back. Azula couldn't go around throwing fireballs at people to get her way, and neither of the men looked like they were about to make her leave the phone alone. One the other hand, there was Granny's pointed remarks about not resorting to violence and the importance of teaching children how to handle things appropriately.

Winry wasn't sure how to do that when Azula couldn't understand a word she said, but she knew it didn't involve ripping the phone out of her hands again. That brought things down to the level of a playground fight and Winry was a responsible adult confiscating something that Azula shouldn't be playing with here, not a toddler who had lost a toy.

And so, like Granny had always done when Winry had gotten into something she shouldn't have, Winry strode the two steps it took to get right in front of Azula and held out her hand. "Give it," she said slowing and clearly.

Azula looked up, frowning at Winry's hand as though she really didn't understand what she was supposed to be doing. Winry raised an eyebrow. "Now," she said, raising her voice as much as she could without actually shouting.

Zuko said something, and whatever it was made Azula glare at him.

Out of the corner of her eyes, Winry could see Ed and General Mustang coming up to flank her, probably worried that Azula would throw another fireball. "But you're not going to throw any fire, are you, Azula? You're going to hand over the phone like a good girl."

"Is it really worth fighting her over a phone?" Ed whispered into Winry's ear.

"It's not about the phone," Winry whispered back, knowing that she couldn't appear to be debating this if she wanted Azula to obey her. "It's about heading her off before she decides that she can do whatever she wants without any regard for anyone else."

Ed nodded, his face so close to the back of Winry's head that she could feel the motion brushing up against her hair.

Zuko hissed something else from his place behind the couch, sounding completely terrified. It was all Winry could do to keep herself from wincing, as she hadn't wanted to frighten him.

Azula sniffed, pulled herself up to her full height, and dropped the phone at Winry's feet. She stomped of with her nose in the air, as though she hadn't cared about the phone at all and had merely handed it over as a favor to Winry.

"I suppose that's dealt with," Winry said, and she turned her attention to coaxing the little boy out from behind the couch. "You can go back to talking about your alchemy. Thank you for saving me from the little fire monster, Ed."

"She's not a monster," the General said. He looked almost offended. "She's a little girl with some behavioral issues, that's all."

Ed snorted, and for a couple of seconds Winry was afraid that he would make a crack about behavioral issues and set off another bout of bickering, but all he said was, "Right. So you think that the swiggly thing in the bottom right corner is supposed to be an hourglass."

"It certainly looks like one." The General went back over to where he had laid out a sketch of the transmutation circle on the floor, and Ed followed him.

"Maybe if hourglasses were square and didn't have any sand." Confident that they weren't about to get into a fight, Winry tuned out the menfolk. She sat down and pulled out her tool belt, looking for her little screwdrivers.

"Come on, Zuko." Winry flashed her warmest smile at the little boy peaking out from behind the couch. "Don't you want to see what the inside of a phone looks like? I'll have to put it back together so that General Mustang can call people, but we should be able to poke around the inside for a bit first."


	22. Cracks

13th Day, Peach Moon, Year of the Tiger  
Prince Zuko

Zuko glanced away from the dissected innards of the intercom handle, in hopes that Azula would notice and come to look at him with it. But Azula's head was down and she was apparently entirely focused on her drawing, without the slightest care that the intercom handle had been taken away from her.

Zuko knew better. He hadn't been nearly as close to his sister ever since she started school and made friends of her own, but even he knew that when Azula was upset enough to be coloring with her left hand instead of her right, she was close to an explosion.

That usually ended with dead turtle-ducks and Zuko's toys broken, but there were no turtle-ducks here or toys of Zuko's and so Zuko was not sure what would bear the brunt of his sister's wrath this time. He was reasonably sure that it would not be the Firebender General or the lady with all the tools. They had both brought Azula to heel once and Azula did not explode at people who had defeated her.

Which meant that the man with the braid or Hawkeye were the most likely people to get caught in the middle of this. Or Zuko himself. And, as leery as Zuko might be of approaching his sister when she was upset, he had learned from bitter experience that leaving her alone seldom improved her temper.

"Do you want to see the inside of the intercom handle, Azula? I think the lady is going to put it back together in a minute."

Azula stuck her nose in the air and sniffed loudly. Zuko was fairly sure that it was supposed to be an expression of disdain, but thought it mostly sounded sad.

"You don't have too," Zuko said, because he knew that Azula hated feeling like she was forced into anything. "I just thought you might _want_ too."

"Why would I _want_ to know what the inside of an intercom handle looks like? It's the kind of useless thing that only dum-dums like you would be interested in."

Zuko did not think it was very fair of his sister to say that, when she had been the one who went to so much fuss trying to get her hands on it, but he also didn't think it was a good idea to needle Azula when she was already upset. "Okay. It is pretty boring."

Azula rolled her eyes.

"I don't even know what it needs so many wires for," Zuko added, hoping that a chance to show off that she knew more than him might be enough to pull Azula out of her funk.

Azula snorted and patted her brother's cheek. "Stupid Zuzu. It was made by the _Earth_ Kingdom. Of course it has all kind of extraneous features."

Zuko felt his cheeks heating with embarrassment, and he bit back and angry retort. Azula was trying to make him angry, trying to make him lash out at her so that she wouldn't be the only one in trouble. "I was trying to be friendly," he snapped after a couple of seconds of silence. "I guess I shouldn't have bothered." He stomped back over to where the intercom handle lay, sparks flying from his fists.

The ponytailed lady who had disassembled the handle frowned, glancing back and forth between Zuko's fists and what Zuko had to assume was Azula. He refused to turn around and check, even when the soft patter of feet told him that she was coming over to him for some reason.

"I thought you weren't interested in stupid Earth Kingdom things," Zuko said.

Azula huffed. "In case you haven't noticed, Dum-dum, we're surrounded by stupid Earth Kingdom things now. And we're going to be forever, unless I can find us a way home."

Zuko thought that she was being a bit presumptuous, because if anyone was going to find them a way home it would be the adults who knew how they had gotten here in the first place, but he kept his mouth shut. Azula had already thrown a fireball at someone today and staying quiet was the best way to keep himself from being target number two.

"I suppose you _might_ be able to help with that," Azula said, so quietly that Zuko almost didn't hear here. "The Earth Kingdom peasants like you better than me for some stupid reason."

Zuko thought that it was probably because he hadn't thrown any fire at them, but that was another thing he doubted Azula would take well to hearing right now. "I already told them how we got here," he said, thinking that might be more helpful.

Azula glared at him. The ponytail lady glared at _her_ and Azula crossed her arms and glared right back, her lower lip trembling as though she were about to burst into tears.

The ponytail lady seemed to take the hint, because she smiled and started pointing out the various parts of the intercom handle, along with what must have been an explanation of what they all did because her description was far too long to simply be a list of names.

"She hates me," Azula said, when the lady had started putting the intercom handle back together. "She hates me and wants to make sure that I never see Father or the Fire Nation again."

Zuko thought it was more likely that she wanted to hand Azula off to Dad so that _she_ would never have to see Azula again, because that's how things usually were with people who didn't like Zuko. None of them had bothered trying to keep him from the palace or Mom, they just tried to keep him away from them.

"You don't seem very upset by that, Zuko." Azula gave him on of her disappointed looks, as though he were Ty Lee and had failed to sympathize with her properly. "You know you don't have to worry that she'll be angry if you don't like her. She can't understand anything you say."

"Do you think– if we're stuck here for a long time– that you could teach me firebending?" Zuko asked as a way to change the subject.

"I've got better things to do than baby you through your firebending lessons," Azula said. It was almost exactly what Dad had said, when Zuko had first started firebending and had asked if he would teach her the way he taught Azula, and Zuko bristled. "I have to get us home, after all. Unless you'd rather stay here with the Earth Kingdom peasants. Maybe you should. That way Dad won't have to kill you."

"I didn't believe you the first time you told me that," Zuko said. The ponytailed lady gave him a sharp look, and so he continued a little more gently. "Why should I believe you now?"

"Because it's true," Azula said. "You'll find out when we get home. Mom and Dad will take me right back, but Grandfather wants you dead. You won't last an hour."

A sick feeling crept into Zuko's stomach. If the Fire Lord really did want him dead, then Azula was right. He'd be lucky to last five minutes, let alone an hour. And, since Azula rarely kept up one of her lies for more than a couple of days, it was starting to seem likely that what she said was true. "Did he really say that?"

Azula drew herself up and recited in an obvious imitation of Fire Lord Azulon, "You must know the pain of losing a firstborn son, by sacrificing your own."

"Maybe he'll think it's punishment enough that Dad lost _both_ of us for a bit," Zuko said. He could not quite bring himself to believe it, not when the Fire Lord was known for both his ruthlessness and his ability to hold a grudge, but it was possible. Especially if, as Zuko suspected, it took some months for them to figure out how to get back home.

"Maybe," Azula said. "But we don't have to risk it." She patted Zuko's hand and whispered in his ear, "I'll tell everyone you died. That way you can stay here with all your Earth Kingdom friends and Dad won't be able to get you."

The very idea of that– of staying here where no one understood him without even Azula for company, of never seeing Mom or Dad again– was enough to make Zuko want to throw up. He couldn't bring himself to say yes, not when there was still a chance that Azula might be lying.

But he also couldn't bring himself to say no, not when she might be telling the truth.


End file.
